Gunman kills at least 3, then self at 1-room Pennsylvania Amish schoolhouse

NICKEL MINES, Pa. — It was a scene seemingly frozen in time: a one-room schoolhouse nestled amid a picturesque landscape of horse-drawn buggies, green pastures and well-tended farms.

The Amish people of bucolic Lancaster County left behind the conveniences and problems of the modern world to create a sanctuary where the living is simple and violent crime is virtually nonexistent.

But they could not keep out a milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge Monday as he stormed a tiny Amish school and opened fire on a dozen girls, killing three of them before committing suicide.

At least seven other victims were critically wounded, state police said.

It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, and it could not have happened in a more unlikely place.

After taking over the school, the gunman sent the boys and adults outside and barricaded the doors with two-by-fours. Most of the victims were shot, execution-style, at point-blank range, after being lined up along the chalkboard, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties, authorities said.

"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 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.

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 grudge 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.

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.