Amish schoolhouse where 5 girls were slain is demolished and taken to a dump. New school to be built at different site.
People are seen near the Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa., where a gunman shot 10 girls last week, killing five of them, on Thursday. Workers with machines moved in before dawn Thursday and demolished the one-room Amish schoolhouse.
Amish watch as the rubble from the schoolhouse is picked up and loaded onto trucks.
By Cindy Stauffer And Ad Crable
Updated Feb 20, 2007 12:19
The West Nickel Mines School got its own funeral today, as every part of it was torn down, trucked away and buried.
Before the sun rose, in just 20 minutes, heavy-equipment operators had wiped the earth clean of the tragic place.
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver, shot 10 Amish girls inside the Bart Township school last week before fatally shooting himself. Five of the girls died. Five others remain hospitalized.
The floor that was covered in blood, the chalkboard where the girls were tied together before they were shot, the window frames that police officers burst through into the schoolhouse — all are now in the ground at the Frey Farm county landfill in Manor Township.
“I think it’s the best thing,” said an Amish man, whose carriage shop is not far from the school on Mine Road. “It’s to try to erase the bad memory.”
Daniel Stoltzfus’ 6-year-old son, Levi, was among the boys who fled the schoolhouse at Roberts’ orders, before he barricaded the school and the shootings began.
Stoltzfus arrived at the school at 4 a.m. today to dismantle its simple white fence that became a familiar sight to people all over the world who watched the coverage of the shootings and the aftermath.
“It was a little eerie,” the Amish man said, “but it was something we had to do.”
“We didn’t have our hearts broken like some others,” Stoltzfus said, but added, “It’s been heartbreaking for the whole community. We just have to move on now.”
By 4:45 a.m., about 25 people, many of them Amish, had gathered to watch backhoes claw away at the school, under bright lights set up at the schoolyard’s perimeter.
The demolition was supposed to begin around dawn, but started three hours earlier, presumably to avoid extensive media coverage. Still, the television satellite trucks sat nearby, clustered in a parking lot up the road. Some reporters had camped out all night.
One of the men watching the demolition was the grandfather of Marian Fisher, 13, who died in the shootings, and her 11-year-old sister, Barbie, who survived and is expected to come home from the hospital as early as Friday.
“It makes me sad,” said the 64-year-old man, who didn’t give his name, “because I helped to build it.”
That was back in 1976. The man’s children attended the school before his grandchildren.
Still, he said, “I’m glad it’s not there anymore.”
A father of one of the shooting victims also was glad it was demolished.
“The main reason we wanted it down was we didn’t want a tourist attraction made out of it,” he said.
The site now will become a farm field, blending in with its surroundings, it is hoped.
The Amish community is looking for a new location for a school. Children are being taught at a nearby farm in the meantime.
Two convoys of trucks carried the school’s rubble to the county landfill early this morning, under the watchful eyes of a state police escort and accompanied by an Amish man.
The escorts were there to ensure that the debris stayed out of the hands of curiosity seekers.
“They wanted to make sure that potential doesn’t present itself. Who would want to see that on eBay?” said Jim Warner, executive director of the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority. “Everything came down, anything that anyone could have identified to that site.”
The authority provided trailer trucks to help haul away the debris and disposed of it for free. Demolition workers also provided their equipment and services at no cost, members of the Amish community said.
Stoltzfus said the community is turning its attention to healing and the future.
His son and the rest of the Nickel Mines students, numbering around 15, visited the school Monday to clean out their desks and have one final time there.
The students still are being taught by Emma Mae Zook, their 20-year-old teacher who raced from the school to get help on the day of the shootings.
“She’s a very brave girl,” Stoltzfus said. “She is very attached to the students.”
Stoltzfus said he feared the students would be too afraid to return to school. But they are resuming their lessons and waiting for a new place.
“That’s so encouraging they want to come back,” he said.
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