Exact Cause of Va. Farm Deaths Unknown

Members of the farming community work to finish clearing a drain at a barn at the Showalter dairy farm near Bridgewater, Va., Tuesday, July 3, 2007. In the foreground is a pump connected to a manure pit. On Monday night, four members of the Showalter family and a hired hand died in a methane gas poisoning accident. The victims were Scott Showalter, 34, his wife, Phyillis, 33, their two daughters, Shayla, 11, and Christina, 9, as well as Amous Stoltzfus, 24. Rockingham County Sheriff Don Farley said that after the first victim, Scott Showalter, was overcome trying to unclog a pipe in the covered manure pit, the others climbed in one after the other in a frantic rescue attempt. (AP Photo/Casey Templeton) (Casey Templeton - AP)

Showalter shimmied through the 4-foot opening into the concrete enclosure, which is similar to an underground tank.

"It was probably something he had done a hundred times," Farley said.

The deaths struck hard in this picturesque farming region dotted with red barns, gleaming silos and church steeples that peek above rolling fields.

The Showalters were well known in the community where neighbors do each other's laundry. Their two surviving daughters were being cared for by family members, and friends tended to the family's animals the day after the tragedy.

"The cows have to be milked twice a day, even in an ordeal like this," said Frank Showalter, Scott's great-uncle, standing a few feet from where his relatives died.

The Showalters milked 103 cows on their farm west of Harrisonburg in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. They belonged to a conservative Mennonite church whose members shun many of the trappings of modern society but drive cars, use telephones and, according to police, take modern farm-safety precautions.

Fellow church members were in shock Tuesday, said the Rev. Nathan Horst, a Mennonite bishop.

"We've never had a tragedy of this magnitude," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Sue Lindsey in Roanoke contributed to this report.