Horror in Amish country

Eight of the girls were critically injured. Their conditions were ``very, very dire," said Colonel Jeffery B. Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. He called it ``a horrendous crime scene" and said the victims, at least one as young as 6, had been shot in the head.

The shootings occurred as police outside the schoolhouse were trying to make contact with the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32.

Roberts drove a milk tank truck and lived in the area, Miller said.

He said Roberts, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, and a stun gun, apparently had been motivated by rage over an incident long ago, and that was unconnected to the school or the Amish.

``Apparently there was some sort of an issue in his past that he, for some reason, wanted to exact revenge against female victims," Miller said.

``It's obvious to us that this was a premeditated hostage scenario where, I believe, based on what the investigators have so far, he intended not to walk out of there alive. But he also intended to kill innocent victims."

Two young students and a teenage teacher's aide were killed in the rampage, police said.

Roberts left notes for his wife and three children ``along the lines of suicide notes," Miller said.

The attack at Georgetown Amish School, which had fewer than 30 students, shocked the people of this community, whose religion and traditions require them to remain separate from the outside world and to shun the trappings of modern life, including electricity and motor vehicles. Roberts was not Amish, and Miller said he had no known criminal history.

The shootings in Bart were the third at a US school in five days.

On Wednesday, a 53-year-old drifter took six girls hostage in Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., sexually assaulted them, and fatally shot a 16-year-old girl before killing himself. Two days later, a 15-year-old former student allegedly shot and killed a principal in Cazenovia, Wis.

Elsewhere, three teen-agers were charged in Green Bay, Wis., on Thursday in an alleged plot to bomb and burn a high school and to shoot students as they emerged. And yesterday, officials in Las Vegas said they locked down four schools after a student was spotted entering a high school carrying a gun.

Bart Township, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia, has about 3,000 people and a landscape of grain silos, dairy farms, and tobacco fields.

In the hours after the shootings, television satellite trucks lined country roads usually mostly traveled by the horse-drawn buggies of the Amish.

According to Miller, Roberts's wife, Marie Roberts, told police that her husband worked until 3 a.m. Monday delivering unprocessed milk from Amish farms to a dairy, and then went home.

He took his children to a bus stop at about 8:45 a.m. before driving to the Amish school on White Oak Road.

Roberts apparently was prepared for a long siege, Miller said. In addition to the weapons and rounds of ammunition, he had two cans of smokeless gunpowder, rolls of tape, tools, and a change of clothes.

Marie Roberts later found several suicide notes and tried to call her husband, Miller said. At about 11 a.m., he called her from the schoolhouse and ``told her he wasn't coming home," Miller said. Roberts told her that ``he couldn't go on anymore" and that ``he was getting revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," Miller said.

From the notes to his family and telephone calls, it was clear that Roberts was ``angry at life, he was angry at God," Miller said. Co-workers at the dairy told officers that Roberts had grown despondent in recent days, Miller said.

Quoting a teacher who later escaped, Miller said that when Roberts entered the school, he showed students the handgun and spoke to them in a ``rambling discourse," Miller said.

In a news conference, Miller said Roberts arrived at the school in the morning in a borrowed pickup truck. He said Roberts separated the 15 boys, ages 6 to 13, from the 10 to 12 girls at the school.

Roberts then told the girls to line up against a blackboard and bound their feet with wire ties and plastic handcuffs, Miller said, his voice choked with emotion. Roberts allowed the boys to leave, along with a pregnant woman and three women with infants.

As the women, who were reported to be teachers' aides, were leaving, a teacher was able to flee, and she called police from a nearby farm at 10:36 a.m., Miller said.

As officers arrived at the school and a hostage negotiator tried to contact Roberts, he called a police dispatcher.

He warned that he would start shooting in 10 seconds if police did not withdraw, Miller said. Seconds later, shots rang out, and state troopers carrying ballistic shields rushed the building. Miller said Roberts had barred the doors with lumber that he had brought for that purpose and with desks from the classroom.

Roberts spoke to his wife by cellphone moments before he opened fire, Miller said. In addition to shooting at the girls, he fired out a window at approaching state troopers but did not hit them. Miller said troopers did not fire any shots. One trooper was injured slightly by broken glass while entering the classroom through a window.

They found Roberts face down on the floor, with the weapons beside him, Miller said, adding that ``one of the girls died in the arms of one of my troopers."

Television news footage showed ambulances and police vehicles on the road outside the schoolhouse, which is surrounded by a white fence. A blue pickup truck with white cap over the bed was backed up to the front of the schoolhouse. At one point, firefighters and Amish men walked through nearby fields, looking for students who might have fled and were not accounted for.

The Amish are named for Jacob Amman, a 17th-century Swiss bishop whose followers in the Anabaptist movement were persecuted for their belief that infant baptism was invalid. The first Amish settlers arrived in Lancaster County in the early 18th century, according to Pennsylvania Dutch Country Welcome Center's Web site.

Donald Kraybill, a leading national scholar of Amish communities, said he recalled one or two cases of arson at Amish schoolhouses but no other violence.

``I think this is really an aberration," said Kraybill, who is a senior fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

Kraybill, who has written about the Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities, said Lancaster County has about 150 one-room schoolhouses.

``The ethos of the classroom accents cooperative activity, obedience, respect, diligence, kindness and interest in the natural world," Kraybill wrote. ``Little attention is given to independent thinking and critical analysis -- the esteemed values of public education. Despite the emphasis on order, playful pranks and giggles are commonplace."

Irene Moyer, who is Amish, said she first heard about the ``mass casualty" by word of mouth and then was contacted by the parents of one of the children at the school.

She said: ``One of the Amish neighbors knocked at the door and said: `Can you take care of my children? There's a gunman at the school.' "

County crisis workers and other mental health professionals descended on the rural community in hopes of counseling the victims' families sequestered in homes.

``With the Amish culture, they generally don't reach out," said Donna Williams, a licensed social worker in private practice. ``Ironically, they're the first ones to help out."