There is no such thing as a "safe place".

I lived just miles from this latest school shooting. All I heard this morning on the news was that there was a school shooting in Lancaster, Pa. My heart immediately dropped to my stomach. I have 3 siblings in Lancaster County schools right now. I grabbed the phone and called my mom to see if my brother and sisters were safe. Thankfully the shooting was not at their schools but still it scared the hell out of me. The shooting occurred at a small one room school house in the Amish community of Nickel Mines. I have drove through that village numerous times. It's the most beautiful and quiet place. It's surrounded by the "Old Order Amish" and the thought of a violent crime occurring there is almost unbelievable....

Please say a prayer for the families of those who were killed. No one on earth deserves to go through something like this.


NICKEL MINES, Pa. - A milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge stormed a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with two-by-fours, and then opened fire on a dozen girls, killing four people before committing suicide.

At least six other victims were critically wounded, authorities said.

It was the nation’s third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and it sent shock waves through Lancaster County’s bucolic Amish country, a picturesque landscape of horse-drawn buggies, green pastures and neat-as-a-pin farms, where violent crime is virtually nonexistent.

Most of the victims had been shot execution-style at point-blank range after being lined up along the chalkboard, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties, authorities said. Two young students were killed, along with a female teacher’s aide who was slightly older than the students, state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. A fourth victim died later, WCAU-TV reported.

“This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community. They’re solid citizens in the community. They’re good people. They don’t deserve ... no one deserves this,” State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.


The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old truck driver from the nearby town of Bart, was bent on killing young girls as a way of “acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago” when he was a boy, Miller said.

Miller refused to say what that long-ago hurt was.

Roberts was not Amish and appeared to have nothing against the Amish community, Miller said. Instead, Miller said, he apparently picked the school because it was close by, there were girls there, and it had little or no security.

The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in Bailey, Colo., and authorities there raised the possibility that the Pennsylvania attack was a copycat crime.

Miller said Roberts was apparently preparing for a long siege, arming himself with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and a rifle, along with a bag of about 600 rounds of ammunition, two cans of smokeless powder, two knives and a stun gun on his belt. He also had rolls of tape, various tools and a change of clothes.



Roberts had left several rambling notes to his wife and three children that Miller said were “along the lines of suicide notes.” The gunman also called his wife during the siege by cell phone to tell her he was getting even for some long-ago offense, according to Miller.

From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was “angry at life, he was angry at God,” Miller said. And it was clear from interviews with his co-workers at the dairy that his mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with fellow employees and customers, the officer said.

Miller said that Roberts had been scheduled to take a random drug test on Monday. But the officer said it was not clear what role that may have played in the attack.

Miller said investigators were looking into the possibility the attack may have been related to the death of one of Roberts’ own children. According to an obituary, Roberts and his wife, Marie, lost a daughter shortly after she was born in 1997.

As rescue workers and investigators tromped over the surrounding farmland, looking for evidence around this tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia, dozens of people in traditional plain Amish clothing watched — the men in light-colored shirts, dark pants and broad-brimmed straw farmer’s hats, the women in bonnets and long dark dresses.

Reporters were kept away from the school after the shooting, and the Amish were reluctant to speak with the media, as is their custom.

The victims were members of the Old Order Amish. Lancaster County is home to some 20,000 Old Order Amish, who eschew automobiles, electricity, computers, fancy clothes and most other modern conveniences, live among their own people, and typically speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.

Bob Allen, a clerk at a bookstore in the Amish country tourist town of Intercourse, said residents see the area as being safe and the Amish as peaceful people. “It just goes to show there’s no safe place. There’s really no such thing,” he said.

The shooting took place at the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, a neat white building set amid green fields, with a square white horse fence around the schoolyard. The school had about 25 to 30 students, ages 6 to 13.

According to investigators, Roberts walked his children to the school bus stop, then backed his truck up to the Amish school, unloaded his weapons and several pieces of lumber, and walked in around 10 a.m. He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies, Miller said.

He barricaded the doors with two-by-fours and two-by-sixes nailed into place, piled-up desks and flexible plastic ties; made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard; and tied their feet together with wire ties and plastic ties, Miller said.

The teacher and another adult at the school fled to a farmhouse nearby, and someone there called 911 to report a gunman holding students hostage.

Roberts apparently called his wife around 11 a.m., saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge, Miller said. Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police didn’t back away from the building. Within seconds, troopers heard gunfire. They smashed the windows to get inside, and found his body.

Miller said he had no immediate evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted.

Killed were two students, and a female teacher’s aide who was 15 or 16 years old, authorities said.

No one answered the door at Roberts’ small, one-story home on Tuesday afternoon. Children’s toys were strewn on the porch and in the yard.

‘Our hearts are broken’
A family spokesman, Dwight LeFever, read a short statement from Roberts’ wife that said, in part, “Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today. Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our family and children.”

The shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man singled out several girls as hostages in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Authorities said the man in Colorado sexually molested the girls.

“If this is some kind of a copycat, it’s horrible and of concern to everybody, all law enforcement,” said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park County, Colo.

Miller, though, said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was not a copycat crime: “I really believe this was about this individual and what was going on inside his head.”

On Friday, a school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder.

The Pennsylvania attack was the deadliest school shooting since a teenager went on a rampage last year on an Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minn., killing 10 people in all, including five students, a teacher, a security guard and himself.

Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., remains the deadliest school shooting, with 15 dead, including the two teenage gunmen.

In Pennsylvania’s insular Amish country, the outer world has intruded on occasion. In 1999, two Amish men were sent to jail for buying cocaine from a motorcycle gang and selling it to young people in their community.

There were four murders in Lancaster County in 2005, including the killings of a non-Amish couple were shot to death in their Lititz home in November by their daughter’s 18-year-old boyfriend.

Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm in Cleveland, said the Colorado and Pennsylvania crimes underscore the lesson that no school is automatically safe from an attack.

“These incidents can happen to a one-classroom schoolhouse to a large urban school,” he said. “The only thing that scares me more than an armed intruder in a school is school and safety officials who believe it can’t happen here.



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This is a sad and unpredictable world we are living in right now and things only seem to be getting worse. You are very correct: there is no safe place left.
The school shootings that are becoming more and more common will soon no longer be front page headlines.
What drives these people to commit the ultimate crime in the places we have known to be safehouses? Why at schools, churches, diners? Oddly enough, it seems to be that the killers are hellbent on reeking chaos and then ending it all by killing themselves, leaving us to wonder why.
So, how do we stop it? I wish I had an answer for that. I don't and doubt anyone does.
My heartfelt sympathy goes out to all families and victims of crime, particuarly to those of the utmost innocence: our children.

I am saddened by such a terrible crime. I work at an elementary school and it is a wonderful place with strong family and community ties, I think it is horrible that anyone would come into a school and wreak such senseless destruction.

These events are horrific, but becoming all too common as stated by ZX11.
I can only offer my prayers to the families.
As a mother of adult children, I know I was always comfortable knowing my children
were safe "because they were at school".
Now I have to wonder what is happening at my 4 year olds school, is he safe ?
The rules have changed.

Try telling your kids that IF a gunman shows up at school they need to be sure to save themselves and as many of their classmates as possible without gettting themselves killed.

How do you explain to a 14 year old that the man pointing the gun at you and your friends is most likely, almost certainly, going to kill you real quick if you don't do something to stop him, knowing that the act of attempting to stop him may well be the bit that pushes him over the edge?

Try telling your kid that jumping out a second story window is a better alternative to being in a classroom with a nutjob and his gun. Try explaining that if your childs friends won't go, your child needs to at the first opportunity anyway.

And even then, it's something you just never know about, when it's coming.

I know a kid out here, goes to a "decent" high school, not "too" much gang activity.
There is a continuation school on this kids campus, easier for the police to keep out people who should not be on campus that way. Not too long ago a car drives up, like any other car full of high school students, and they kill a kid standing outside the continuation school, broad daylight, 3:30 in the afternoon, and drive away.

Schools are becoming targets more and more. Maybe becasue kids can't really fight these sick bastards. I don't know but I tell you, it's a pretty crappy situation.

If I sent my kids to school with any type of defensive mechanism, be it knife, mace, club or gun, they would be immediately expelled under the Zero tolerance rules and laws.

Some days it's hard not to just park across the street from where they're at class and just wait for them to get out.

Originally Posted by Wilomn

Try telling your kids that IF a gunman shows up at school they need to be sure to save themselves and as many of their classmates as possible without gettting themselves killed.

How do you explain to a 14 year old that the man pointing the gun at you and your friends is most likely, almost certainly, going to kill you real quick if you don't do something to stop him, knowing that the act of attempting to stop him may well be the bit that pushes him over the edge?

Try telling your kid that jumping out a second story window is a better alternative to being in a classroom with a nutjob and his gun. Try explaining that if your childs friends won't go, your child needs to at the first opportunity anyway.

And even then, it's something you just never know about, when it's coming.

I know a kid out here, goes to a "decent" high school, not "too" much gang activity.
There is a continuation school on this kids campus, easier for the police to keep out people who should not be on campus that way. Not too long ago a car drives up, like any other car full of high school students, and they kill a kid standing outside the continuation school, broad daylight, 3:30 in the afternoon, and drive away.

Schools are becoming targets more and more. Maybe becasue kids can't really fight these sick bastards. I don't know but I tell you, it's a pretty crappy situation.

If I sent my kids to school with any type of defensive mechanism, be it knife, mace, club or gun, they would be immediately expelled under the Zero tolerance rules and laws.

Some days it's hard not to just park across the street from where they're at class and just wait for them to get out.

You make some excellent points, Wes.

In school your taught to "walk away" from conflict, never defend yourself and completely rely on the teachers and staff for your own protection. That in my opinion is bullshit. The student body in most schools gets larger and larger every year, while the staff gets cut more and more. Parents just can't rely on the staff to protect their children anymore. It just can't be done in my opinion. They need to teach their children what to do and how to handle themselves if something bad were to ever happen. Double edged sword??? Maybe, but it might just save your child's life.

The days of thinking your children are safe at school are long gone.

Wiloman, to be quite honest it makes me want to sit in the room with him.
Or keep him home. But I cannot justify taking away his "life" to make me feel safe. Not to mention in this day and age My husband and I both have to work
to make ends meet.
I guess there is no "easy answer" . I wish, I pray, that people will one day realize that life is precious.

With the latest from PA saying the guy packed some sex lube and the dude in CO sexually assaulting the girls he held and all the school shootings, I am giving serious consideration to home schooling. It is not gettting any easier to raise kids and I believe that before advancing any further, we will be forced to go back in time to find the safest things all over again.
School funds are being cut back, the staff are comitting a wide variety of crimes, gangs, guns, knifes, abusive teachers, lack of proper education, and metal detectors at the doors. Yea, I believe that home schooling is going to become alot more popular in the very near future.

Safety vs. Interaction


I would not hesitate to Home school my 4 yr. old, except:
1. I cannot afford to NOT work.
2. I wonder how it would affect his social development.
3. In some Colleges they refuse to accept "Home School" credits for High School. (thus you can Home School up to 7th grade then the child has to go to a regular High School)
I really cannot say the school systems my older children attended were the worst nor were they the best. I can say they did not "inspire" the children.
The school that my youngest daughter attends (high school) actually SEEMS
to encourage the children to "settle". Just get your diploma and get out.
They are given a choice at the beginning of their High School career, basic diploma, tech school bound, or college bound. The course work is then structured around that choice. If the child has difficulty in a class they then encourage the child to Down Grade the choice of further education, "because it would be easier" to obtain.
Well, I feel it is up to parents to "encourage their children" to support them.
Sometimes that is difficult to do when they see the teachers willing to "give up"
The violence is also a daily presence. Fights, with and without weapons.
Children threatend right in the class room in front of teachers, with no repercussions.
These are daily occurrences, we have sadly learned to live with, Home school is sounding better every day.

I know incidents like this must really make parents think of home schooling their children. What scares me is this; that little one room school house is pretty much a home schooling situation. It was isolated, private and only children from the community could attend. The whole school only had 12-15 students in it. Many of them were related by blood and all of them were related via the community they lived in. Just like one big happy family. What's the difference between a gunman entering that place and a gunman entering your home? Not much in my opinion.


Exactly why I say there really is no "safe" place left.