Amish School Shooting

CNN.com - Fifth girl dies after Amish school shooting -
Oct 3, 2006

CNN.com In a grave dug by hand, Amish to lay fifth
girl to rest.

Amish children knew their killer - Times Online - 1
hour ago

Murder visits an Amish school house - Houston Chronicle
- 7 hours ago

Amish bury fifth girl slain in school attack - London
Free Press - 16 hours ago

The Amish and the Plain People of Lancaster County, PA

The Amish live a tranquil and simple life; the ...

kare11.com :: KARE 11 TV - Funerals held for Amish
girls killed at ...
... the Amish have reached out to the family of the
gunman, Charles Carl ...

www.kare11.com/news/national/national_article.aspx?storyid=136150
- 51k -

The girls' families, Amish neighbors and
friends are coping with the slayings by looking inward,
relying on themselves and their faith, just as they
have for centuries, to get them through what one Amish
bishop called "our 9/11."

"They know their children are going to heaven. They
know their children are innocent ... and they know that
they will join them in death," said Gertrude
Huntington, a Michigan researcher who has written a
book about children in Amish society.

"The hurt is very great," Huntington said. "But they
don't balance the hurt with hate."

In just about any other community, a deadly school
shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders
for tighter gun laws and better security, and the
victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the
gunman's family or threatened to sue.

But that's not the Amish way.

In the aftermath of Monday's violence, the Amish have
reached out to the family of the gunman, Charles Carl
Roberts IV, 32, who committed suicide during the attack
in a one-room schoolhouse.

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, said an
Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after
the shooting and extended forgiveness to them. Among
Roberts' survivors are his wife and three children.

"I hope they stay around here and they'll have a lot of
friends and a lot of support,"
said Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and
woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the
school during the attack.

Roberts' relatives may even receive money from a fund
established to help victims and their families, said
Kevin King, executive director of Mennonite Disaster
services, an agency managing the donations.

Though the Amish generally do not accept help from
outside their community, King quoted an Amish bishop as
saying, "We are not asking for funds. In fact, it's
wrong for us to ask. But we will accept them with
humility."

=================
======== Killer's wife is invited guest at first Amish
funeral
06.10.06 London, Saturday 07.10.06

In a ceremony made more heartbreaking by its
centuries-old simplicity, four little girls were buried
yesterday as the Amish of Pennsylvania turned the other
cheek.

With television and newspaper cameras kept at a
distance, and police helicopters enforcing a no-fly
zone overhead, one of the few non-Amish guests invited
to the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersole,
the first little girl to be buried, was Marie Roberts,
the killer's wife.

. Gallery: see more pictures from the Amish funeral

With tears in her eyes, Mrs Roberts sat in the back of
one of the 34 black horse-drawn carriages that were
part of the funeral cortege behind Naomi's horse-drawn
hearse.

Like the other three children who were buried - the
oldest, Marian Fisher, 13; and sisters Mary Liz Miller,
eight, and Lena Miller, seven - Naomi was laid to rest
in a simple wooden casket, narrow at the head and feet
and wider in the middle.

All the children were dressed in a traditional white
burial gown with a cape and a white prayer-covering on
the head.

Each ceremony was attended by around 500 mourners.
Services were also held throughout the day for
non-Amish mourners at a church in the nearby town of
Correyville.