Amish Murder School Razed

The Pennsylvania school in which five Amish girls were shot dead and five injured this month was bulldozed before dawn yesterday and the rubble buried, as a small rural community attempted to erase all physical traces of the murders.

The grave of the killer, Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk lorry driver who shot himself after the murders, has been vandalised, but members of the Amish religious community in the town of Nickel Mines called for forgiveness, suggesting that he might not have been responsible for his actions.

"The devil took control of him," Sam Fisher, the Amish manager of an auction house, told the Reuters news agency.

The sect generally eschews modern mechanisation, preferring to work by hand, but Nickel Mines made an exception to rid itself of the schoolhouse quickly. Demolition crews arrived in the early hours of the morning with bulldozers and mechanical diggers and had razed the school by sunrise, watched by a cluster of local residents, many in traditional Amish clothes. Community leaders want the site left as pasture.

"I thought there was widespread feeling in the community that it was important to remove the building," Herman Bontrager, a businessman who is serving as the community's spokesman, told reporters. "Especially for the children, but not only for the children."

The surviving schoolchildren are continuing their lessons in the converted garage of an Amish farm, but there is only one girl among them. She escaped when Roberts walked into the school on October 2, sent the boys away and held the girls hostage for about an hour before shooting 10 of them execution-style. Five survived, but their current condition is unknown. The hospital where they are being treated has stopped providing details at the request of their families.