Amish School Shooting

August 29, 2008

The Amish school shooting that happened on October 2nd, 2006 was a shocking tragedy. A gunman took hostages and killed 5 young girls, 7-13 years old, then committed suicide after. All of this happened at West Nickel Mines School. The shooter was Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32 year old milk-tank truck driver.

Charles wife told police he molested 2 young female relatives 20 years before the shooting. According to police reports, he has been daydreaming about molesting again. However, the 2 relatives denied any abuse. Its possible that they might be covering up for him now because hes gone and maybe they dont want to relive any of it. Its still unclear to pinpoint the exact reason of why he committed this crime.

Unlike most school shooting, most of the Amish community wanted to forgive the shooter and not think of him as an evil man as well as reach out to the ones that have lost a loved one. The Amish even set up a charitable fund for the shooter as well. Amish are not known to accept donations, but because of extreme nature of the tragedy, they accepted donations. Donations were used to pay for the medical costs of the hospitalized children.

The school was demolished a couple weeks after the tragedy. They constructed a new school, the New Hope School, in replace of the old one in a nearby location. After what happened, some of the Amish parents have decided to home school instead of putting them in harms way.

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