The fifth girl is still at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia but is “making progress,” the source, an Amishman, said.
One of the girls who returned home is 11-year-old Barbie Fisher, according to earlier reports. Her older sister, Marian, died after the shootings, and her younger sister, Emma, escaped the school unharmed.
The community is happy to have the girls home safe, the man said.
Thirteen-year-old Marian and four others died after Charles Carl Roberts IV shot the 10 girls inside West Nickel Mines School Oct. 2. Roberts took his own life.
Three weeks to the day after the shootings, the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the national nonprofit Faith and Action organization in Washington, D.C., visited Lancaster to deliver binders filled with hundreds of prayers e-mailed to the group by Christians nationwide.
While here Monday, Schenck visited with the Amish families and sat with one of the older girls recovering at home.
“She was doing remarkably well considering the injuries she sustained,” Schenck said Wednesday night. “Of course, you can see the deep trauma she has suffered emotionally.”
Schenck said he read her some prayers from the binder and she smiled “a genuine, childlike smile.”
The girls are suffering from “horrendous injuries; their scars will be lifelong, and some will deal with lifelong disabilities,” he said.
Schenck said the girls, including the one to whom he spoke, are talking to their families about their experiences.
“I’m not sure which did more damage — the bullet or the horrific experience she was exposed to in that schoolhouse,” Schenck said. “You can see that injury to her soul as much as the injury to her body.”
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