Updated Feb 20, 2007 12:19
3 A.M.: Charles Carl Roberts IV, age 32, a milk tanker-truck driver, returns to his Georgetown Road home in Bart Township after delivering milk from area farms to a processing plant.
8:45 A.M.: Roberts walks two of his children to a nearby bus stop. He returns home and, after his wife leaves, writes several suicide notes.
10 A.M.: Roberts drives a borrowed pickup truck to West Nickel Mines School, about a mile away.
He brings a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun, a 30-06 rifle, 600 rounds of ammunition, a stun gun, two knives, gunpowder, a change of clothes, lumber, plastic “flex-cuff” fasteners and a five-gallon bucket holding tools, tape, screws, bolts and wire.
After backing up his truck to the school, Roberts enters the one-room building, holding the pistol.
He releases all 15 male students, a pregnant woman and three women with infant children. The female teacher and at least one female student flee.
Roberts lines all 10 remaining girls — students age 6 to 13 — in front of the blackboard, ties their feet together or ties them to one another, and barricades the doors with lumber.
10:36 A.M.: The teacher reaches a nearby home and calls 911.
10:45 A.M.: State police arrive at the school. They try to talk to Roberts, using public-address speakers in their cruisers, but Roberts does not respond.
SHORTLY BEFORE 11 A.M.: His wife, returning home and finding at least one of his notes, tries to reach Roberts on his cell phone.
11 A.M.: Roberts uses his cell phone to call his wife back. He tells her that he’s left notes for her and the children, that the police are at the school and that he will not be coming home.
MOMENTS LATER: Roberts calls 911, saying he will start shooting if the police don’t leave in 10 seconds. Police trace Roberts’ 911 call to his cell phone and try to call him back, but can’t get through.
Roberts begins rapidly shooting the girls in the backs of their heads, firing about a dozen rounds from the pistol and three rounds from the 12-gauge shotgun. He also shoots once at police, missing.
Police, without returning fire, storm the school. Discovering the doors are blocked, they enter through the windows.
They find Roberts and one girl dead; A second girl dies in the arms of a state police trooper carrying her out of the school. A third dies en route to Lancaster General Hospital.
Overnight, a girl taken to Christiana Hospital in Delaware and a girl taken to Hershey Medical Center also die, bringing the number of fatally wounded to five.
At press time today, the five other girls remain hospitalized with gunshot wounds, all in critical or serious condition.
