Locally, 2006 will most often be remembered for one horrible day in October, when an unspeakably violent act shattered the peaceful innocence of an Amish schoolhouse.

Not only was the shooting at the West Nickel Mines School in Bart Township the biggest news story of the year, it is arguably the biggest news story of this generation.

But it wasn’t the only story to make headlines this year.

Six months earlier, few could have imagined that the grisly April murders of six family members in Leola by one of their relatives would not be the most publicized story of killing this year.

On the positive side, 2006 was a good one for local baseball fans.

Lancaster County saw its first native son inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and area residents cheered the hometown professional team on to its first league championship.

In other sports news, Farmersville native Floyd Landis overcame a bad hip and one terrible day in the Alps to win the Tour de France, only to have his title stripped amid accusations of cheating.

Politically speaking, 2006 will be remembered as the year voters took revenge on state lawmakers who gave themselves a pay raise in the middle of the night in 2005; the year Democrats regained total control of city government; and the year the three county commissioners were busted for holding secret meetings.

Following are the top 10 local news stories of 2006 in no particular order.

AMISH MURDERS

It was a sunny morning Oct. 2, when Charles Carl Roberts IV stormed a one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines and took 10 young Amish girls hostage.

For reasons still unknown, Roberts shot all 10 girls before turning his gun on himself and committing suicide.

Five of the girls died.

State police theorized Roberts shot the girls as an act of revenge against God for the death of Roberts’ daughter, Elise, who died 20 minutes after she was prematurely born in 1997.

The shootings touched off a media circus unlike any other in memory.

All over the world, people read articles and watched television programs about the killings and about the Amish community’s quick response of forgiveness.

Worldwide support for the Nickel Mines Amish community was overwhelming, with monetary donations to a relief fund reaching about $4 million.

As the media frenzy whirled around them, the Amish resumed their lives.

The schoolhouse was razed before dawn just 10 days after the shootings, and plans are in the works to build a new one at an undisclosed location.

The children who attended the school, including three of the five wounded girls, have resumed classes in a temporary facility.

LANDIS’ FAMOUS RIDE

Farmersville native and Conestoga Valley High School graduate Floyd Landis was no stranger to the Tour de France.

He had helped former teammate Lance Armstrong win a couple of titles in previous years.

But the 2006 Tour was Floyd’s time to shine.

Riding with an arthritic hip, Floyd had become the man to beat as cycling’s biggest race reached the middle of its third and final week.

But on July 19, with just four days left in the race, Landis ran out of gas in the Alps and lost an unheard-of 10 minutes.

Many experts figured he had no chance of regaining the lead.

A day later, however, Landis found his form again, and he left the competition in the dust.

On July 23, Landis rode into Paris to claim his victory.

Just four days later, Landis’ team, Phonak, announced Landis was found to have an unusually high level of testosterone in his system following the July 20 stage of the race.

Landis maintains he did not cheat and that he naturally has a high level of testosterone.

He requested a second test be done on the urine sample he submitted July 20. Results from that test also indicated a high level of testosterone.

Landis was fired by Phonak and is contesting his positive test results before the World Anti-Doping Agency.

If he loses that fight, scheduled for February, he will be stripped of his Tour de France title. Whether he wins or loses that fight, however, his reputation in the cycling world already has been shattered.

LEOLA MURDERS

After numerous brushes with the law and what friends described as a building temper, Jesse D. Wise Jr., 21, went on a killing spree in his own house in Leola last April, leaving six of his relatives dead.

Authorities allege Wise strangled and beat to death his family members, including his grandmother, 5-year-old cousin and four other relatives.

It’s believed to be the largest murder spree in recent Lancaster County history.

Police say Wise used his grandmother’s credit cards and money from the victims to go shopping and entertain a teenage girlfriend in the days after the murders.

All the while, his relatives’ bodies deteriorated in the basement of their Leola home.

His grandfather, Jessie Lee Wise Sr., 65, was in New York on business and repeatedly called the house looking for his family.

Wise kept making excuses, police said, telling his grandfather they were not home.

Two days after the killings, police allege Wise set out with another teenage girl for New York to try to kill his grandfather.

They got as far as the Pennsylvania Turnpike when the vehicle broke down.

Meanwhile, the grandfather contacted a family friend who accompanied police to the Leola home, where the bodies were discovered.

The younger Wise was arrested a short time later.

District Attorney Don Totaro is seeking the death penalty for Wise, who is awaiting trial.

COMMISSION FOLLIES

The Lancaster County commissioners made this list in 2005 for a series of negative antics.

Last year proved to be just as controversial for Republican commissioners Dick Shellenberger and Pete Shaub and Democrat Molly Henderson.

In March, Shaub and Shellenberger admitted to holding secret meetings to strategize the 2005 sale of Conestoga View nursing home.

All three commissioners were charged in December, at the recommendation of an investigating grand jury, with violating the state Sunshine Act for participating in secret meetings regarding the sale. They all pleaded guilty to the charges.

The commissioners squared off in court in July against developers of the proposed downtown convention center and hotel when developers asked a county judge to stop Shellenberger and Henderson from trying to kill the project.

Judge Joseph Madenspacher ruled the commissioners could not enforce two resolutions they had passed that attacked part of the project’s financing.

In another matter, in late October a Commonwealth Court judge upheld a lower court ruling stating the commissioners had acted improperly in 2004 when they took by eminent domain from Norfolk Southern the abandoned, 23-mile Enola Low Grade Line for a rail trail.

That decision paved the way for Bart, Conestoga, Eden, Martic, Providence and Sadsbury townships to take ownership of the land.

The commissioners said they will not appeal the ruling and will continue to negotiate with the townships to establish a county-run rail trail on the line.

Shaub began telling local elected officials and county employees the day after Christmas that he plans to resign as commissioner this week to take a job in construction.

CONVENTION CENTER

Skyrocketing construction costs and determined opposition to a hotel and convention center proposed for downtown Lancaster were said in July to have killed the project after nearly eight years of planning.

Developer Penn Square Partners announced that bids for construction contracts were $20 million over budget and the gap was “likely too great to fill.”

A day after the partners announced the certain death of the project planned for the site of the former Watt & Shand department store, however, local and state elected officials pledged to help bridge the funding gap.

Demolition of the Watt & Shand building continued despite the cries of protest from project foes to leave it intact.

Stabilization of the historic facade continues today.

Within a month of the announced death of the project, elected officials and developers said the $20 million funding gap had nearly been filled and construction contracts were awarded.

BARNSTORMERS WIN

In just their second year in existence, the Lancaster Barnstormers won the Atlantic League crown Oct. 1 by defeating the Bridgeport Bluefish, 5-2, in a game at Clipper Magazine Stadium.

The Barnstormers swept the Bluefish, 3-0, in the championship series.

Guided by Hempfield High School graduate and former major leaguer Tom Herr, the Barnstormers finished the season with a record of 75-51.

The team won the first- and second-half titles in the South Division and went undefeated throughout the playoffs.

If the Barnstormers are to repeat their feat this year, they will have to do it with a new manager.

Herr announced his resignation in December to become manager of the Hagerstown Suns, a Single-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals.

He was replaced by Frank Klebe, who was the third-base coach for the Barnstormers last season.

ELECTION PAYBACK

A controversial decision to approve a pay raise for state legislators in 2005 led to the ouster of three local incumbent GOP lawmakers last year.

State Sen. David “Chip” Brightbill and state Reps. Gibson C. Armstrong and Roy Baldwin lost primary fights in May against political newcomers Mike Folmer, Bryan Cutler and John Bear, respectively.

All three incumbents had ties to the unpopular pay raise, later repealed, which hiked legislators’ salaries between 16 and 54 percent and led to widespread calls to oust established lawmakers across Pennsylvania.

The middle-of-the-night pay raise approved without public input in the summer of 2005 ignited a firestorm of outrage.

Only after four months of relentless criticism did state lawmakers begin fearing for their jobs and decide to tear up their pay raises.

For Baldwin, Brightbill and Armstrong, however, the move came too late.

Democratic state Rep. Mike Sturla, who also supported the pay raise, did not suffer the same fate and won a new term representing the 96th District by defeating Republican Patrick Snyder in November.

SUTTER TO HALL

On July 30, Lancaster County inducted its first native son into the hallowed Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Bruce Sutter, who spent 13 seasons from 1976 to 1988 in the major leagues with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves, was the only player voted into the Hall this year by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

A 1970 graduate of Donegal High School and native of Mount Joy, Sutter, 53, saved 300 games in his pro career, saved a then-major league record 45 games in 1984, was named to six all-star teams and finished in the top 10 in the National League Most Valuable Player Award voting five times — virtually unheard of for a relief pitcher.

NEW MAYOR

After eight years of Republican leadership under Charlie Smithgall, the job of running Lancaster city went to Democrat Rick Gray.

Gray, who defeated Smithgall in the November 2005 general election, was sworn in Jan. 3 and quickly made his presence known.

Besides appointing a new police chief and a new fire bureau chief, Gray came out immediately in support of the $170-million convention center and hotel project proposed for Penn Square, which put him in direct opposition to fellow Democrat Henderson.

After years of consideration by city officials, Gray finally pushed for having a single trash hauler — York Waste — serve the entire city. The program began in October.

Previously, city residents were required to hire private haulers, but an estimated 2,500 of the city’s 17,000 residential units did not have trash service.

As a result, there was illegal dumping on public land and in abandoned houses, creating a public health hazard, city officials said.

On Dec. 19, Gray easily won approval from city council of a $44 million budget for 2007, which includes an 8 percent tax hike and increases in water and sewer rates.

NO SLOTS

A controversial proposal to establish a slots parlor in downtown Lancaster pitched in 2005 faced a mountain of opposition.

City and county elected officials, as well as state lawmakers, worked to derail the plan to transform the Bulova Technologies building into a slots parlor with up to 5,000 slot machines.

In February, Pennsylvania Gaming Group LLP, headed locally by attorneys Jerry Finefrock and Jim Nettleton Jr., pulled the plug on the project, saying they just didn’t want to fight the fight any longer.

“In my opinion, it was ill-conceived from the start,” state Sen. Gibson E. Armstrong said. “I don’t think they were properly prepared, and I think everybody is much better off for it.”

In December, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board awarded 11 slots licenses, paving the way for parlors in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the Pocono Mountains and Bethlehem, among other locations.


P.J. Reilly’s e-mail address is preilly@lnpnews.com. blog comments powered by Disqus