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NICKEL MINES, Pa. - A milk-truck driver carrying three guns, 600 rounds of ammo and some kind of 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 11 girls when police didn't retreat, killing three of them before committing suicide.

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.

Two girls died at the scene. Nine others were taken to hospitals, where one died on arrival and eight were in critical condition. The dead were two students and a teacher's aide said to be in her teens.

The dead and wounded 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.

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.

20-year-old grudge
The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old 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,” State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said. Miller gave no details on what the grudge was.

Roberts was not Amish and apparently had no particular grudge 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.

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


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.

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.

The shooting took place at the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School, a neat white building set amid green fields in an area postmarked Paradise, Pa. The school had about 25 to 30 students, ages 6 to 13.


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Dropped his kids off at school
According to investigators, Roberts dropped his children off at the school bus stop, then pulled up at the Amish school in his truck and walked in around 10 a.m. with a shotgun, two handguns, 600 rounds of ammunition and several pieces of lumber. He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies, Miller said.

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He barred the doors with two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, made the remaining girls line up along a blackboard, and tied their feet together with wire ties and flexible plastic ties, Miller said.

A teacher called police around 10:30 a.m. and reported that a gunman was 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. When they got inside, they found his body.

The names and ages of the dead were not immediately released.

Three girls — 13, 8 and 6 — were in critical condition at the Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey. The rest of the wounded were taken to other hospitals in Pennsylvania and Delaware; their condition was not immediately disclosed.

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...

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Originally posted by hubbabaloo:
I want to know what the "grudge" was.