Residents of Pennsylvania are grieving another school shooting, this time in Lancaster County.

It occurred in a one room Old Order Amish school. Three girls are dead, and seven are wounded, some critically. The  school house outside Nickel Mines about 88 kilometres west of Philadelphia had about 22 students.

The children were shot by a 32 year old neighbour of the Amish community who picked up milk from their farms. Truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV, had three children of his own.

Roberts shot the children execution style before being shot.  Police are saying he left suicide notes to his children, and called his wife to inform her this was revenge for something that had happened 20 years earlier.

The children he killed range in age (varying reports) from 5 to 15.

The Amish are Anabaptists, scattered in about 20 US states and in the province of Ontario Canada. Lancaster County is home to one of the more strict branches of this form of Mennonites, called the Old Order. It is estimated there are about 16 to 18 thousand.

Anabaptists began to settle in North America in the early 1700’s, fleeing religious persecution in Europe. Once settled they broke into dozens of groups.

They live in what are called districts or congregations that are as self-autonomous as possible. The Lancaster County Amish are known as the most conservative, avoiding modern technology and observing strict rules on dress and behavior, believing in humility and separation from a corrupting world. Amish are one of about 1200 protestant or Christian denominations in the US, although there is no consensus on where the Amish ’fit’ within Christianity.

They were founded in the late 1600’s by Jacob Amman, and took their faith and practises from the 1632 Mennonite Dordrecht Confession of Faith. It is believed the Amish separated from other Anabaptists because of what they perceived as a lack of discipline.

Amish beliefs

Lancaster County Amish Practises

Amish conflicts (internal and external)

Anabaptist: “re-baptizers”, from Greek ana and baptizo; in German: Wiedertäufer.

A member of a radical movement of the 16th-century Reformation that viewed baptism solely as an external witness to a believer’s conscious profession of faith, rejected infant baptism, and believed in the separation of church from state, in the shunning of nonbelievers, and in simplicity of life.

Update: A 7 year old girl and a 9 year old girl died in hospital, bringing the number of children shot to death to five.
Pennsylvannia State Police released what they believe were Roberts motives.