As fifth child is buried, reports of a girl's heroics emerge

GEORGETOWN, Pa. -- Under a cold, steady drizzle, the Amish drove in horse and buggy to a farmland cemetery yesterday to bury the fifth of five girls shot to death by an intruder as new details emerged of heroism inside their schoolhouse.

Two of the survivors of the shooting told their parents that 13-year-old Marian Fisher, one of the slain girls, asked to be shot first, apparently hoping the younger girls would be let go, according to Leroy Zook, an Amish dairy farmer.

``Shoot me and leave the other ones loose," Marian has been quoted as saying, Zook said. His daughter, Emma Mae Zook, was the teacher who ran from the schoolhouse to a farm to summon police.

Amish builder David Lapp said Marian's younger sister Barbie, who is recovering from gunshot wounds, provided one of the accounts.

Parents of two of the surviving victims have also told Leroy Zook that the children questioned the shooter, Charles Carl Roberts IV, after the adults left.

``They just asked him why he's doing this. He said he's angry with God," Zook said.

Yesterday, more than 40 buggies splashed along country roads behind a funeral home car, two mounted state troopers, and a carriage with the body of 12-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus in a wooden coffin.

Four other girls who were fatally shot Monday , two of them sisters, were laid to rest Thursday in the same hilltop graveyard.

All roads into Nickel Mines village were again blocked, and the funeral procession, like those Thursday, passed the home of the 32-year-old Roberts, who took the 10 girls, ages 6 to 13, hostage, tied them up, and shot them before killing himself.

One of the surviving girls was reported to be in grave condition. The county coroner said he had been told she was being taken off life support, but her location was not known yesterday. The four other girls remain hospitalized.

Funerals for Fisher, 13, Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7, and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7, were held Thursday.

New details also emerged yesterday about the scene outside the schoolhouse.

Lapp, the builder, said he was told there was a gunman at the school and arrived before police, stopping a few hundred yards from the school.

``It was a feeling of helplessness," Lapp said.

He saw all the boys in the school escape through a side door, jump a fence, and then huddle together in a meadow. Lapp watched police storm the building and heard the gunfire.

``We just started shaking. There were a couple of us by then," he said.

There were about 15 boys, ages 6 to 13, in the school.

``They're still in shock. . . . They have this glazed look in their eyes," woodworker Daniel Esh, whose three grandnephews were in the school, said earlier this week. ``They'll heal, but it will affect them their whole lives."

Just hours after the shootings, the teacher vowed to return to her students. Though just 20, Emma Mae Zook had taught at the school for three years.

``She said: `Yeah, I need those children now. I need them more than I ever did,' " Leroy Zook said.

Many Amish have embraced the gunman's wife, Marie Roberts, and their three young children.

Lloyd Welk, Marie Roberts's grandfather, waited outside for the last funeral procession as a steady rain tapered to a slight drizzle late yesterday morning.