Several people shot dead at an Amish school in Pennsylvania

xpost

Shooter's not necessarily Amish, though?

Dude, the Amish don't own entire medieval Amish cities, police forces included -- they just live off outside of town, selling organic chickens and bugging the non-Amish for lifts to Wal-Mart. They're pretty big on the distinction between owning/operating modern technology and just, like, getting someone else to do it for you. (See also: some orthodox Jews allegedly stepping onto elevators on the Sabbath but not pushing any buttons, and just stepping out on their floor whenever they happen to get there by, umm, chance.)

The teenager, Eric Hainstock, was arrested and has been charged with murder.

The gumnan is a 32 year old father of three.

PARADISE, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A man apparently targeting young girls walked into a one-room Amish schoolhouse and shot three students to death before killing himself, police said Monday. Seven others were wounded in the attack.

"It seems as though he wanted to attack young female victims, and this is close to his residence, that's the only reason we can figure that he went to the school," said Comm. Jeffrey Miller, Pennsylvania State Police.

The shooting took place at Wolf Rock School in Paradise, a school run by the Amish community with about 27 students in grades 1 through 8.

One of the children died in the arms of a trooper, Miller said.

The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was a truck driver, said Miller. He was not Amish. He had three children, and left several notes for his family "along the lines of suicide notes," Miller said.

Police said he had barricaded himself in the schoolhouse two-by-four and two-by-six pieces of lumber.

Fifteen male students were released from the school, Miller said.

At least five young girls with gunshot wounds were taken to area hospitals, a spokeswoman said.

Gunman let boys go

Miller said that during the attack, Roberts apparently told students to line up in front of the blackboard. He began to tie his female captives' feet together. Then he let the boys in the classroom leave.

Miller said Roberts also allowed an adult female who was pregnant to leave and three other adult females who had infant children with them.

At the time he let them leave, the teacher was able to get out of the schoolhouse and alert authorities, Miller said. (Watch police investigate shooting scene -- 1:00)

Miller said Roberts called his wife while he was inside the school. She said he didn't know where he was, but that he couldn't go on any more and he was getting revenge for something that happened 20 years ago. (Watch aftermath of deadly school shooting -- 2:00)

Lancaster General Hospital initially received three young patients, ages 6 to 15 -- one in critical condition -- and expects to receive three more patients soon, spokeswoman Kim Hatch told CNN.

Two were transferred to Hershey Medical Center and another to Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, while the fourth remains at Lancaster General, she said.

Another young female suffering from a gunshot wound to the head and right hand was taken to Reading Hospital and Medical Center, where she was in critical condition before she was transferred to Children's Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Lancaster County's 911 Web site reported dozens of emergency vehicles -- including at least nine ambulances -- were dispatched to Bart Township shortly before 11 a.m. for a "medical emergency." The Lancaster County emergency communications Web site showed 20 incident calls listed to the normally quiet Bart Township at 10:48 a.m.

Shortly after the attack, men, women and girls in traditional Amish clothing gathered in small groups outside the country schoolhouse along a dirt road. Horse-drawn carriages could be seen in a nearby parking lot.

The attack was the nation's third deadly school shooting in a week.

On Wednesday, a 53-year-old man entered a high school in Bailey, Colorado, where he held several female students hostage at gunpoint. He shot one girl before killing himself seconds after a SWAT team stormed inside the classroom.

A high school student near Madison, Wisconsin, is suspected of fatally gunning down his principal on Friday, after he was disciplined for carrying tobacco and being bullied.

(why didn't the shooting in Wisconsin get a thread when this one and the Colorado one did? Not interesting enough since no kids got hurt?)

That would be my guess; I hadn't actually heard about that one until today (and the coda about the kid getting punished for being bullied is just... argh).

xpost

something about the combination of easy access to guns (nice job, war on terror) + easy access to meth (nice job, war on drugs)

that's an interesting thought. How are hate crimes determined?

Not that we know anything about this person yet, or what kinds of motivations were in play.

THIS JUST IN: People do stupid shit every day.

-- Thermo Thinwall (tupac.chopr...), October 2nd, 2006.

Yeah, you're quite the conversationalist, aren't you?

Think this is the cruncher. I think this incident is horrific - a thread was started here and people discussed it and I was here and I felt like joining in. I didn't have anything to say about the last "oh noes, people got shot at a school" thread earlier, so I didn't - again, it wasn't a discussion, it was a "here is the news for people who haven't seen the news" thread. Why these incidents deserved threads and other random bad shit doesn't - not for me to say, I'm not the person starting these sort of threads. But since it's here, and people are being morons about it, I'm trying to redress the balance a bit.

Except, as per usual, Nabisco is doing it better than me.

-- ailsa (ailsa.watso...), October 3rd, 2006 9:28 AM. (ailsa) (later) (link)

uh, what? of course it is. stop trying to out-empathize everyone here, sheesh.

(why didn't the shooting in Wisconsin get a thread when this one and the Colorado one did? Not interesting enough since no kids got hurt?)

-- ailsa (ailsa.watso...), October 2nd, 2006 12:49 PM. (ailsa) (later) (link)

...not starting a thread about a tragedy /= thinking that said tragedy isn't lurid enough for discussion.

xp right.

The comments about why some hypothetical threads weren't started is no reflection at all on my thoughts of any event mentioned or not mentioned on ILE. That was a separate discussion about what exactly was the point on starting threads on some random shootings and not others, especially, as has been pointed out, the thread-starter has offered no comments on the threads started, just factual rundowns cut and pasted from elsewhere.

re: I just wondered why one child being left fatherless as a result of these actions is any more or less fucked up than several parents losing a child.

i think what's especially creepy here isn't the father-less child, but the fact that daddy went and killed a bunch of girls her age.

also, serious question: how much does the average non-American know about the Amish? I'm just sort of curious.

I get the impression the Amishness wasn't a factor in this though.

the going hog-wild thing (rumspringa) is a fascinating little part of Amish culture.

all snarky comments aside (upthread): the Amish I've met in the hospital setting really are palpably foreign; it's not just funny hats and living simply. A lot of them don't speak English, and those that do have very distinct accents.

Shrewd motherfuckers, though.

That was the point I was trying to make. I'm trying not to visualize the daughter saying "Mommy, did daddy want me dead too?" Adding the effect this is going to have on his own kids does make this story more fucked up.

anyway.

xp to myself

However, he said Roberts had been equipped with a "restraint kit" and two tubes of lubricant gel, which he could have been planning to use in a sexual assault.

So it looks like if the police hadn't been called then he would've molested them all before executing them.

:((((((((((

Are we [uninvolved bystanders] meant to be relieved that luckily the police were called and, erm, oh yeah, they're still dead? Levels of general fucked-up-ness are futile (though Rock Hardy OTM in that it's going to be more fucked-up for the families involved, who are allowed to indulge* in drawing levels - something I wasn't doing when I was a bit sarcastic to Thermo) xxpost

* I know that's a loaded phrase, it's not mean to be, I just can't think of an alternative right now

This just in: poster comes in thread to let everyone know he doesn't like the thread.

Tip of the day: if you don't like it, ignore it.

Then again, I really need to let people know how much cleverer I am than all you guys 'n' girls.

Tip of the day: if you don't like it, ignore it.

You're right. I should have just ignored it, and I will do so in the future.

This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

We teach there are no absolutes, no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.

Help for paedophiles

MSN to close its chatrooms

Abortion has diminished the value of children

Dear God, this guy's a character, isn't he?

Actually, if you consider the basic laws of supply and demand, it's quite the opposite.

i seriously forgot what thread i was in for a second and thought you were talking about louis jagger's rant

if only.

This is really the only principled response. Any attempt to connect the event to a political/religious/something context is at best academic sophistry, at worst cynical politics of the kind we've come to expect reflexively ("and now, the spin:"), and in any case denies the reality of events.

I suppose that sort of intellectualization is one way of holding the impossibly sad at arm's length, but forcing the victims to stand for something is a violation that differs from the crime only in degree.

He might but he might also believe in the certainty of hell for his actions.

Definitely not a point I'd argue. Both violations hinge on treating others as objects for one's own purposes, is all. Which has a name: evil.

Here's to better times and small good things and the categorical imperative.

I'm thinking of The Sweet Hereafter a lot. How many decades and lives the past week's events will ripple across...

I've been wondering that recently about a lot of stuff, actually. Had forgotten The Sweet Hereafter dealt with that issue...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,217760,00.html

Shirley Phelps-Roper, the daughter of church's pastor, told FOXNews.com the group canceled the protests in exchange for an hour of radio time Thursday on syndicated talk-show host Mike Gallagher's radio program.