He Let the Boys Go. Then He Tied Up the Girls and Opened Fire

The events that unfolded in a one-room Pennsylvania schoolhouse yesterday morning brought the unaccustomed wail of ambulances and police sirens to country roads more used to the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages. In their wake they brought satellite television news crews into the heart of a community that shuns the modern world.

Most people in Nickel Mines, a tiny hamlet of stone farmhouses and red barns nestled among rolling green fields, realised something was wrong when they heard the first approaching sirens. They learned the names of the dead only by late afternoon, when Amish church elders, in their distinctive straw hats and long beards, took to the country lanes in enclosed horse-drawn carts and pick-up trucks to spread the awful news.

A red pick-up truck with four men inside pulled up beside Barb as she took a break from mowing the lawn, pushing back her starched white cap. She turned away from the truck with a hand clutched over her mouth. "Naomi Rhodes. She was a member of our church. She was only little, maybe six or seven and she was the only girl in her family."

Though Nickel Mines is home to both Amish and outsiders to the sect, all of the children at the school, a low building behind a white fence, were members of the Amish community known as "plain" children because of their simple clothing.

Amish shun contact with the modern world, including telephones and television, so even yesterday's news spread painfully slowly. For Barb the attacks had a special horror: her niece, Emma Mae Zook, was a teacher at the school.

A non-Amish neighbour invited her to watch the siege on television and, despite her beliefs, Barb took a look. Even though she discovered that Ms Zook had managed to flee the school, Barb was still worried for her. "She's all right, but it's going to be awful for her," she fretted.

By late afternoon she still had not managed to speak to her 21-year-old niece. Ms Zook's family does not have a telephone and the wait was agonising. "I just said a little prayer for her," said Barb. "I just cried because I felt so bad for her and the children - little innocent children."

Down the road, dozens of satellite television trucks encircled the auction house where some family members were meeting for comfort. But the spotlight on this community seemed unlikely to help their search for solace.

"This is exactly what they don't want, 500 trucks of satellites setting up on top of them," said Keith, who is not Amish and lives across the road.

The man police named yesterday as the gunman was a 32-year-old truck driver called Charles Carl Roberts IV. Though Roberts had moved there only fairly recently, he had a long standing connection to Nickel Mines through his wife's family. He and his wife lived near her grandparents and she was seen regularly in the community as she went for her daily walks around the churchyard.

Yesterday morning, police said, Roberts got up and took his children to the bus stop at about 8am. When his wife came home, she discovered a set of rambling suicide notes that he had left for them. At around 10am, Roberts drove to the little schoolhouse. He got out and walked into the school carrying a gun and an automatic pistol. Once inside, he rounded up the children and blocked all the doors with wooden boards.

Witnesses told the police that he waved the handgun in front of them and talked to them about it.

Then he separated the girls from the boy pupils, allowing all 15 boys to leave the school. He also let a pregnant school assistant and other adults with infant children out. The teacher managed at that point to escape and sound the alarm at 10.36am. Troopers were scrambled and arrived at the scene minutes later.

By then Roberts had lined up the girls in the class and bound them with wire ties that he had brought along. He called his wife and told her he was not coming home and that he loved her. He also called the state police and said that unless they withdrew within 10 seconds he would open fire.

Moments later gunfire broke out. State troopers immediately stormed the building and, finding the doors barricaded, broke in through the windows. Inside, they found Roberts already dead, along with two girls and another girl who was a classroom assistant.

No one in Nickel Mines yesterday could understand Roberts's actions. Jeffrey Miller, the state police commissioner, said the killer probably had not deliberately targeted Amish children, but had chosen the school because he was bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago".

Whatever his motivation, few people in Nickel Mines yesterday were thinking about Charles Carl Roberts IV. Instead, they were beginning to grieve for his victims, both living and dead.

"I can't imagine how the parents must feel," said Barb. "It just hurts. What these children went through today is going to ruin their lives forever. They are never going to get over it."