Amish School Shootings

This just in at 12:54pm US/Eastern from Breintbart.com (AP): A gunman killed "a number" of people at a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday in Pennsylvania's bucolic Lancaster County, state police said. The shooter was among the dead, and a number of people were injured, said state police Cpl. Ralph Striebig." Developing ...

Update 3:19pm

AP writer, Mark Scolforo, has updated the story with a post entitled "Milk Man Kills Girls at Pa. Amish School." The incident occurred at Nickel Mines, PA. Scolforo reports that a 32-year old milk truck driver, later identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV, "took about a dozen girls hostage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, barricaded the doors with boards and killed at least three girls and apparently himself." At least seven individuals were taken to hospitals, including at least three girls with critical gunshot wounds. State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller is quoted as saying that Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone, saying he was "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," and that it seems as though "he wanted to attack young, female victims."

This is was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, similar to an attack just days earlier at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man took several girls hostage in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Reports such as this are always terribly disturbing. Especially disturbing to me personally is this one from an Amish community. I find it difficult to imagine a people more peaceable and opposed to the violence of our modern world than the Amish. Christus, miserere nobis. Sancta Dei Genetrix, ora pro nobis.

Update 10/3/06 7:30am

I heard on the radio on the way in to school this morning that one of the girls in the critical unit died overnight of gunshot wounds in the hospital, bringing the total number of dead to four. So far, I've heard no further clarification as to possible motives, beyond Mark Scolforo's 8:09pm update last night, which reported that Roberts, the gunman, had left several rambling notes to his wife and three children that Miller, the State Police Commissioner, described as being "along the lines of suicide notes." Miller said that from the suicide notes and telephone calls Roberts made to his wife during the seige, it was clear that Roberts was "angry at life, he was angry at God." Miller also is reported as saying that investigators were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts' own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife, Marie, lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997. Scolforo also reported that news reporters were kept away from the school after the shooting. The Amish are reluctant to speak with the media, in keeping with their tradition of separation from the culture of modern secularism.

Update 10/4/06

A total of five of the ten girls that Robert took hostage and shot in the Amish school house are now dead. Five others remain hospitalized, four in critical condition. Further information disclosed that Roberts had told his wife that he had molested young children some twenty years ago and had been tormented by fantasies of molesting again. (Mark Scolforo, 10/3/06 12:21pm)

"Facilis descensus Averno; noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est." (The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way: but to return, and view the cheerful skies, in this the task and mighty labor lies.") (Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI, Lines 126-129)

Update 10/6/06

... And then they mourned the loss of their daughers and forgave the man who murdered them ...