Horror & Heroism

By JANET KELLEY

MORNING RECESS HAD just ended on that beautiful, warm October day.

Inside the one-room Amish schoolhouse, a boy looked out the window to see a blue pickup truck backing up the gravel driveway.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, whom some of the children recognized as the man who picked up milk from their farms, parked the truck near the porch, walked up to the front door and stepped into the school.

He held something in his open hand. A rusty trailer hitch, perhaps?

He mumbled something about the object. Had they seen such a thing along the road? Could they help him look?

Sure, the teacher agreed, trying to humor the man.

Roberts turned, walked back out to the pickup truck and then returned to the classroom.

In his hand, he carried a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol.

“Everybody to the front of the room,’’ he ordered, waving the gun around and pointing it over their heads, “and get down.’’

At the sight of the handgun, Emma Mae Zook, the schoolteacher, bolted out the side door and kept on running.

Several adults were visiting that day, so she knew the children would not be alone with the man.

Her mother, one of the visitors, followed but couldn’t keep up as the thin, 20-year-old teacher ran across a field, nearly a quarter-mile to the farm of Levi King, one of Roberts’ regular milk stops.

***

The night before, as usual, Roberts had driven farm to farm, collecting milk and delivering it to local dairies, then returning to the Nickel Mine Auction parking lot by 3 a.m.

Roberts had dropped off the milk truck there, then returned to his home on Georgetown Road. He slept a few hours, ate breakfast with his wife and children and helped them get ready for school.

At 8:45 a.m., he walked his two oldest children to the bus stop and kissed them goodbye. His wife left for a mothers’ prayer meeting at her church, taking their baby along.

***

What happened next has been pieced together from accounts of state police investigators and from interviews of Amish victims’ friends and relatives, all of whom asked that their names not be published in the newspaper.

State police Lt. A.J. Krawczel, the section commander for Lancaster’s criminal investigation division, said the troopers involved in the incident decided early on to not discuss the events publicly or individually, instead allowing supervisors to give their account.

“This was all about the girls and we believed the total focus should be on them,’’ Krawczel said.

The Amish similarly shun individal recognition, believing that no one person should stand out from the group.

***

On that particular day, Monday, Oct. 2, after his wife and children were gone, Roberts returned home from the bus stop and set out suicide notes for each of them. Then he walked to the shed and loaded the pickup truck he had borrowed from his wife’s grandfather.

At 9:14 a.m., Roberts arrived at Valley Hardware, southeast of Strasburg, where he made two last-minute purchases.

He then drove to the Nickel Mine Auction parking lot, got out of the pickup truck and walked to the front porch to buy a soda from an outside machine.

Several Amish men noticed Roberts standing there, watching the children play outside the nearby West Nickel Mines School.

The children finished recess at 10:15 a.m. and went back inside to sing songs for the visitors.

Meanwhile, Roberts walked back to the pickup and drove down White Oak Road to the school. The gate was unlocked, as was the front door.

It was 10:25 a.m. when Roberts walked into the school.

After the teacher and her mother ran for help, Roberts told the others, “Somebody better go get her, or there’s going to be shooting.’’

One little boy volunteered and ran out into the field, but couldn’t catch the fleeing women.

Inside the school, the girls, along with some of the female visitors and some of the boys, sat on the floor at the front of the classroom. The others stood quietly, wondering what would happen next.

The gunman ordered the girls to lie on their stomachs, with their heads toward the chalkboard. Their solid-cotton dresses varied in color, but all wore the traditional black pinafores, with their hair parted in the middle and pulled back into a bun.

Roberts tied some of the girls’ feet and legs together with plastic ties, and he bound some of the girls to one another. Others, such as 12-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus, were not tied at all.

One woman would later tell a friend that she remembered the questioning look in one boy’s eyes. She answered him by putting her hands together in prayer.

Another woman, huddled between sisters Mary Liz and Lena Miller, said 7-year-old Lena asked her several times what the man was going to do.

Stay calm, the woman said she advised the children, cry quietly, do not get loud. Roberts said he would not hurt them if they listened, she said, and they had faith in that promise.

Roberts went back out to the truck and carried in the rest of the items he brought with him that day.

A milk crate full of tools. A bucket packed with clothing. A large black nylon bag. A cardboard box. Several boards, 8 or 10 feet long, one with large eye bolts screwed into it about 10 inches apart. A 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun and a 30.06-caliber rifle.

At 10:35 a.m., 911 operators received their first phone call.

“There’s a guy in the school with a gun.’’

Dismissed

Some of the little girls couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

One of the visitors, who was pregnant, lay down on the floor with 7-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersol, patting her on the back and trying to comfort her.

Roberts told the women they were free to go and take their babies with them.

It was heartbreaking to leave the frightened children alone in the schoolhouse, one woman later told a friend, but they sensed the presence of God and were comforted.

Then Roberts dismissed the boys.

They left, as they were told, but didn’t know what to do. Many of the boys had sisters inside the school.

They gathered together behind one of the outhouses and waited. Someone suggested they pray.

Roberts started pulling down the shades over the windows.

One snapped and rolled up to the ceiling. Roberts moved a desk to the window and climbed onto it to reach the shade.

Nine-year-old Emma Fisher said she heard a female voice clearly tell her, “Now would be a good time to run,’’ and she did, a split-second decision that might have saved her life.

No one else said a word or heard the voice — the voice, many believe, of an angel.

As the women started across the field, they looked back and saw the boys standing outside the school. They motioned for the children to join them, and together they walked quickly to the King farm.

One little boy told his parents that he had thought he would never see them again.

Faith and courage

Roberts was now alone with the 10 girls.

He barricaded the side door, police said, by pushing a game table and desks up against it. Roberts fastened one of the wooden boards against the door handle with a plastic tie, then nailed the board into place.

The double front doors were easier. One door had a vertical, sliding-deadbolt lock. The other had a push bar, which he wedged a board behind. Then he shoved more desks in front of both doors.

The full details of what unfolded next aren’t exactly clear. But relatives and survivors reveal amazing examples of faith and courage.

Roberts heard the girls praying among themselves as they stood at the front of the classroom. He suggested they pray for him.

“Why don’t you pray for us?’’ one girl asked.

Roberts said he didn’t believe in praying.

He was then ready for the next phase of his plan.

Police believe Roberts intended to sexually assault the girls, based on the things he brought with him that day — lubricating jelly, tape, plastic ties and eye bolts screwed into the long board — possibly a device to restrain the girls during his siege.

If just one of you will let me do what I want, he told the girls, I won’t hurt the others.

The older ones spoke urgently to the younger girls in Pennsylvania Dutch — perhaps at this moment — “Duh’s net! Duh’s net!’’ (Don’t do it! Don’t do it!)

Roberts reached for the binding around one girl’s legs. She kicked and screamed.

Police

Before he could go further with his plan, Roberts realized the police were outside the schoolhouse.

Three state troopers were on the scene at 10:44 a.m., nine minutes after the first 911 call.

“Now the cops are here,’’ Anna Mae Stoltzfus told another child.

Words of comfort to herself and the other children, relatives believe. Possibly her final words.

Knowing that a gunman was inside with the children, the troopers walked cautiously toward the building, a 30-by-34-foot, one-story structure, said Capt. John Laufer, head of the Lancaster state police barracks.

Unable to see inside the school because the shades were drawn tightly over all the windows, the troopers quietly approached the front and side doors, discovering they were locked.

The next minute, at 10:45 a.m., dispatchers reported that there could be as many as 26 people inside the school with the gunman.

Seven more troopers arrived in minutes.

Eventually, more than 100 state troopers and other police officers would arrive at the scene, along with at least 20 ambulance crews and volunteer fire companies.

The 10 troopers surrounded the schoolhouse, creeping closer, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening inside and where the gunman was standing.

At the same time, Sgt. Doug Burig, the initial commander at the scene, ordered the troopers to “be careful, stay invisible’’ and take cover behind anything they could find — a tree, an outhouse, a fence post, an embankment.

The troopers could not see anything inside the school. All they heard was the occasional sound of children crying.

One of the troopers, a trained negotiator, used a public-address system in a cruiser parked at the end of the driveway to try to communicate with the gunman.

Witnesses said they heard the trooper ask Roberts repeatedly to put down his gun, to talk to police, to come out.

At one point during the ordeal, Roberts said something about giving up and walked to the door, one of the surviving girls told her family.

But then he changed his mind and turned around.

“He said he’s sorry, he has to do this,’’ the girl said Roberts told them.

Chaos

At 10:55 a.m., Roberts called 911.

“I just took, uh, 10 girls hostage and I want everybody off the property or, or else,’’ he told the dispatcher.

“OK, all right,’’ the dispatcher answered.

“Now!’’ Roberts commanded.

The dispatcher tried to talk to Roberts, asking him what the problem was.

“Sir, I want you to stay on the phone with me, OK? I’m going to let the state police down there, I need to let you talk to them, OK? Can I transfer you to them?’’

“No, you tell them and that’s it. Right now or they’re dead, in two seconds...Two seconds that’s it.’’

Roberts turned to the girls, telling them, “I’m going to make you pay for my daughter.’’

He hung up.

Marian Fisher, 13, looked into the barrel of the gun and told Roberts to shoot her first. Her little sister, 11-year-old Barbie, told Roberts to shoot her next.

Dispatchers told the troopers of Roberts’ demand and broadcast the suspect’s cell-phone number. The negotiator repeatedly punched the number into his phone. Each time, it went into voice mail.

Several minutes later, at 11:05 a.m., police heard three quick shotgun blasts. Marian was the first to be shot.

Troopers rushed to the building, guns drawn.

Ten pistol shots rang out in rapid succession as troopers kicked and pulled at the doors and smashed windows with shields, batons and rifle butts.

Another shotgun blast came out the window of the front door, narrowly missing several troopers. The blast hit the back of the pickup truck, sending pellets sailing through the truck cap and windshield.

Broken glass showered one trooper. Another said he heard the pellets fly past his head.

Roberts reloaded the handgun, put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.

As the first troopers entered the school — climbing through a broken window and opening the front door — they saw Roberts fall to the floor.

“It was a very brave thing they did,’’ Laufer said of the troopers at the scene.

“They were running toward the gunfire as he’s opening fire at a tremendous risk to their own lives, including a shotgun blast fired in their direction as they’re going into the building.’’

Esther King, 13, later told relatives Roberts must have been determined to kill her because she had several gunshot wounds.

She pretended to be dead, Esther told relatives, but peeked up at the gunman and watched as he shot the others and himself.

The first five girls Roberts shot — pulling the trigger as he went down the line — were the ones who died, an Amish man said. The other five girls rolled around and put their arms up over their heads, trying to protect themselves from the bullets.

One trooper pushed the barricade away from the front door, Laufer said. Shattered glass and blood lay everywhere inside the tiny schoolhouse.

Other troopers followed him into the horrific scene and began gently carrying the girls to a makeshift triage site on the front lawn of the school, along the white-washed fence, calling for ambulance crews that had been waiting outside the line of fire.

Rachel Stoltzfus, 8, who said she wasn’t tied up, “remembers coming out of the schoolhouse and sitting on the porch,’’ her family said.

“The cops came and asked her if she’s hurt. She said she wasn’t,’’ not realizing she had gunshot wounds in her back, arm and jaw.

Minutes before the shooting started, 911 dispatchers also received a call from Marie Roberts. She told them her husband had called to say “he wasn’t going to be coming home and that the police were there and he left notes for myself and my children and I’m worried that he tried to commit suicide somewhere.’’

Roberts was angry at God for the death of their firstborn child, his wife said, and upset about molesting two young relatives 20 years ago.

“I have no idea what he is talking about,’’ Mrs. Roberts told the dispatcher, “but I am really scared.’’

At 11:10 a.m., state troopers radioed dispatchers again, reporting “a mass casualty on White Oak Road, Bart Township, with multiple children shot.’’

Aftermath

Some said the inside of the Amish schoolhouse looked like a war zone.

“There was no room to get 10 stretchers inside that schoolhouse,’’ Laufer said. “They had to get them out of there’’ so the ambulance crews could work on them.

The troopers grabbed coats to cover the wounds and used pressure to try to control the bleeding in the five minutes before ambulance workers could get into the schoolyard.

Witnesses said that, in most cases, each trooper stayed with the girl he or she carried out, keeping pressure on the wounds and trying to keep the patients conscious.

Soaked in blood, the troopers held the girls and spoke softly and calmly, offering encouragement and reassuring them that they were now safe.

Or, in the case of one girl, until she died in the trooper’s arms.

At 11:11 a.m., police radioed dispatchers again, estimating 10 to 12 patients with head injuries. The first medical helicopter was dispatched.

Ambulances from Bart Township and Christiana were close by as dispatchers broadcast a “mass casualty response,’’ instantly notifying dozens of medical personnel from across the county.

In the front yard of the school and along the roads, clusters of Amish families stood in groups, clutching one another as they watched in horror and disbelief.

One trooper, a former emergency-room nurse, joined medics and ambulance workers in performing first aid, evaluating conditions and trying to tend to the girls with the most-urgent needs.

The Ebersols later told friends they recognized the shoes of their only daughter, Naomi Rose, as she was being carried from the school.

Five medical helicopters flew to the scene, making it look more like a combat rescue operation than a rural Bart Township pasture.

The helicopters landed just outside the schoolyard, pausing just long enough for medics to carry a stretcher to their waiting crews, placing a child inside for the flight.

In addition, four state police helicopters and a state police airplane patrolled the skies, trying to keep other aircraft — mostly from the media — from getting in the way of the mass medical airlift.

On a nearby hillside, across Mine Road from the Nickel Mine Auction, people gathered to watch the strange scene in the valley below. Neighbors — Amish and non-Amish — spoke softly, sharing snippets of what they’d heard. Some wiped away tears, others wept openly.

Dozens of police cars, firetrucks and ambulances, all with emergency lights flashing, rushed to the scene, parking end to end on White Oak Road while helicopters buzzed just above the treetops. Horses grazed calmly across the street.

The first critically injured child, Lena Miller, was loaded into a helicopter at 11:21 a.m. and flown to Hershey Medical Center.

Minutes later, a second medical helicopter flew Rachel Stoltzfus to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

A third medical helicopter took Barbie Fisher to Reading Hospital. She would later be flown to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Around the same time, 8-year-old Mary Liz Miller was picked up by a fourth medical helicopter and taken to Christiana Hospital in Delaware.

Four other girls — Marian Fisher, Sarah Ann Stoltzfus, 8, Esther King and Rosanna King, 6 — were taken by ambulance or helicopter to Lancaster General Hospital.

Marian Fisher was pronounced dead on arrival.

Anna Mae Stoltzfus was dead inside the school.

Naomi Rose Ebersol died in the schoolyard.

At 11:22 a.m. county dispatchers were told the gunman was dead. Police asked them to send the coroner to the scene.

Helping families

Where the injured children went, so did the state police.

Teams of troopers traveled to each hospital to gather information they could share with the families as they worked to identify some of the children.

Because the girls were dressed similarly, police could offer families only descriptions of height, approximate age, and hair and eye color as they attempted to discern which child was in which hospital.

Police asked the families of the victims to gather at the King farm, next to the school, where they could keep them informed and talk to those who had escaped from the building before the shooting began.

At Lancaster County-Wide Communications, all available personnel — which doubled the number of dispatchers — started answering phones and sending helicopters and dozens of ambulance and fire company volunteers to the scene.

A dispatch supervisor worked with a state police dispatcher to coordinate the troopers’ needs with whatever emergency resources and personnel the county could provide.

And as horrific as it was, the schoolhouse tragedy was not the only emergency that day, noted Rick Harrison, operations manager of Lancaster County-Wide Communications.

Between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., dispatchers handled 265 additional emergencies, including 68 ambulance calls, 32 fire calls and an incident involving another suicidal gunman.

Lancaster General Hospital’s emergency-room physicians were having a business meeting that morning when “one of the nurses came in to say there was a barricaded gunman in southern Lancaster County.’’

Dr. Michael Reihart, the hospital’s emergency-room incident commander, said that at first they had no idea how many people were hurt.

A “Condition Green’’ was broadcast throughout the hospital — code words for implementing the hospital’s mass-casualty plan.

Instantly, the entire staff went on alert. Extra doctors and nurses rushed to the emergency room. Other local hospitals were notified to take any other ambulances.

City police arrived to supplement the hospital’s security staff. The hospital’s head chaplain called in extra personnel and set up a conference room for families with food, drinks and grief counselors.

While Lancaster General Hospital is the county’s designated trauma center, it does not have pediatric specialty care, so Reihart knew “we’d have to stabilize and get them to a children’s hospital by helicopter.’’

As the girls were being placed in helicopters or ambulances at the schoolhouse, Reihart said, he kept hearing dispatchers say that “a child with head injuries’’ was on the way to the hospital.

“I thought, ‘Is this a mistake? Is there just one child and they keep repeating it? How can all these children have the same type of injury?’’’

The staff was poised inside the emergency-room trauma bays and outside on the helicopter pad. No one screamed or yelled like they do in emergency rooms on television, Reihart said.

“It’s a hum. Like a beehive. You do this the same way every time...You have to focus on the good you can do and the lives you save,’’ Reihart said, rather than dwelling on the sadness.

The Rev. Keith Bitner, the hospital’s director of pastoral services, said he “went down to the emergency department and saw all these little children.’’ His eyes fixed on one little girl’s laced black shoe.

“I saw this shoe and asked, ‘Are they Amish?’ ’’

Yes, a nurse told him, all Amish.

Reihart said the process of treating the injured girls — as they came in, were stabilized and sent out again — was like orchestrating a surreal dance.

One helicopter flew in, and the patient was placed on a litter, wheeled down the ramp, down the elevator and down the hall into the trauma bay.

Another patient came by ambulance and was rushed down the hall. Another, ready to be flown on to one of the pediatric centers, was taken back up to the helicopter pad.

Again and again.

“By lunchtime,’’ Reihart said, “it was over.’’

Anytime you’re dealing with children the same age as your own, you cannot help but transfer that experience to your own children, Bitner said. “Immediately we go there.’’

“When you work here and hear a trauma, quickly in your mind, you think, ‘Where would my child be at this time of day?’ ’’

Reihart said that in his 25 years of working in emergency medicine, “I’ve never seen anything like this...It was surreal, the horror of it all. It was the biggest disaster scene in Lancaster County.

“It wasn’t a car accident or a gang shooting,’’ Reihart added, “it was children, and Amish children, the most innocent of all...It rattles your foundation.’’

Into the night

At the scene, the grim work continued.

Dr. G. Gary Kirchner, the Lancaster County Coroner, along with other deputies, Janice Ballenger, Amanda Shelley and Dr. Robert Good, all arrived at the scene.

“Blood. Glass. Trash. Chaos,’’ said Kirchner, describing the scene inside the school. A sight, he added, that he will never forget.

But some things remained in order. The lunchboxes in the corner. Books and flowers on the teacher’s desk. Cheerful posters, the alphabet and religious signs still hanging on the wall.

Lancaster County’s mobile command center, a trailer filled with phones and computers, was driven to the scene to serve as temporary headquarters for the state police.

Efforts to identify the wounded girls continued. At the hospitals, police took digital photographs of the patients and sent them via computer to the mobile command center, where troopers printed them out and took them to the King farm for families to view.

More than 100 members of the Amish families gathered at the King farm, not wanting to leave until they knew where their daughters were. Relatives cried and consoled one another.

Boys silently pitched small stones in the gravel driveway.

The Ebersols, who knew they had lost Naomi Rose, were the first to go home.

As the investigation at the schoolhouse continued, a second trailer, owned by Chester County Emergency Services, was brought to the scene to serve as a headquarters for volunteer firefighters and fire police.

Those agencies coordinated such practical issues as traffic control, food donations for police and volunteers, and management of the media.

Dozens of television crews and reporters had flocked to the scene as word spread of the schoolhouse shooting.

By 2 p.m., when Col. Jeffrey Miller, the state police commissioner, gave his first media briefing inside the Nickel Mine Auction, the narrow, two-lane Mine Road just east of the school was jammed.

Media vehicles sat bumper to bumper along the road. Reporters interviewed any Amish person who would talk, and gawked at the helicopters circling overhead.

Television reporters broadcast live, standing next to vans topped with tall satellite towers. Newspaper photographers climbed onto the roofs of their cars to get a better view of the schoolhouse.

While people around the world tuned in to watch the horrific news on television, Emma Fisher, the little Amish girl who escaped the schoolhouse, was home baking cookies.

Neighbor women had come to the house to finish the chores and care for the children while the Fisher parents talked with police and the others about their injured daughters.

“The neighbor ladies were folding wash. Emma was helping,’’ one Amish woman said. “Sometime that afternoon, she got the notion she’s going to bake cookies. The ladies said it would let her get her mind on something else.’’

In addition to meeting with the schoolhouse survivors, investigators also spent the afternoon talking to Marie Roberts and her husband’s relatives, trying to understand what could have sparked such a homicidal outburst.

No one had any idea. The two adult female relatives whom Roberts said he had molested as children could remember no such encounter.

As darkness fell, police used floodlights hooked to generators to illuminate the schoolhouse so they could continue taking photographs and collecting evidence.

“We knew early on there was going to be no prosecution,’’ explained Laufer, the state police captain. “However, we still had to investigate it as a multiple homicide, gathering the same amount of evidence.’’

The information would be necessary to answer questions later, Laufer explained, such as what kinds of guns were used, how close the shooter stood and how many times he fired.

Goodbyes

A team of Amish elders traveled on its own to Lancaster General Hospital in an effort to gather information about the girls. But the children, except for the one girl who was dead on arrival, had all been transferred.

The Amish group would return later that night when the bodies of the dead girls were X-rayed for forensic purposes.

State police offered to drive or fly the Amish families anywhere to be near their children, Laufer said, knowing they did not own automobiles. All declined to fly and some had made other arrangements to be driven by friends or sheriff’s deputies.

The Stoltzfus family had been driven by police to Christiana Hospital in Delaware, where they believed Anna Mae was being treated.

When they saw the girl who was lying in the hospital bed, however, the Stoltzfuses knew it wasn’t their daughter.

Meanwhile, as the hours passed, the Millers had yet to learn where Lena and Mary Liz were. “Deep inside we surely thought they must be lying lifeless in the schoolhouse,’’ one relative later wrote.

But around 5 p.m., the Miller girls’ parents were rushed by troopers to Christiana Hospital, the police car’s siren screaming and emergency lights flashing as it raced down Route 41.

As they arrived, the Millers saw the Stoltzfuses in the parking lot.

The Stoltzfuses had just been told it was their daughter who lay dead inside the schoolhouse.

The families held one another and wept.

Inside Christiana Hospital, Mary Liz Miller was on life support.

The doctor spoke honestly, relatives said, telling Mary Liz’s parents their child was “in grave condition and brain dead...and that isn’t going to get better.’’

Knowing that made it easier for the family “to make a decision about the life support,’’ relatives said later.

Then, about 10 p.m., the couple was told that their other daughter, Lena, was at Hershey Medical Center. She, too, was in grave condition.

The Millers asked doctors at Hershey to wait until they arrived.

A little after midnight, a nurse disconnected Mary Liz from life support. The parents rubbed their daughter’s arms and kissed their little girl goodbye.

The mother explained to her daughter that soon they would be going to another hospital to see her little sister, Lena.

Lena, too, would be taken off life support, the mother told Mary Liz. “Then you go ahead into heaven,’’ she added.

Mary Liz Miller “died peacefully in her parents’ arms half an hour later,’’ the relative said.

It was close to 2 a.m. when the Millers arrived at Hershey.

Lena was disconnected from life support. Almost immediately, relatives said, life left the little girl as she lay cradled in her parents’ arms.

It was 4:30 a.m.

She was the fifth girl to be pronounced dead.

CONTACT US: jkelley@LNPnews.com or 481-6026