NICKEL MINES, Pa. - Two more children died Tuesday morning of wounds from the
shootings at an Amish schoolhouse, raising the death toll to five girls plus the
gunman who apparently was spurred by a two-decades-old grudge.
A body is carried from a
schoolhouse, where a gunman killed several people, in Nickel Mines, Pa. on
Monday, Oct. 2, 2006. [AP] |
The toll from the
nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week rose twice within a
matter of hours Tuesday with the deaths of a 9-year-old girl at Christiana
Hospital in Delaware and a 7-year-old girl at Penn State Children's Hospital in
Hershey.
Five additional girls were hospitalized.
The Bush administration on Monday called for a school violence summit to be
held next week with education and law enforcement officials to discuss possible
federal action to help communities prevent violence and deal with its aftermath.
State police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said the two girls who died early
Tuesday had suffered "very severe injuries, but the other ones are coming along
very well."
The 9-year-old girl died about 1 a.m., and the 7-year-old girl died about
4:30 a.m.
"Her parents were with her," hospital spokeswoman Amy Buehler Stranges said
of the 7-year-old. "She was taken off life support and she passed away shortly
after."
Authorities said the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, wrote what
authorities described as suicide notes, took guns and ammunition and went to a
nearby one-room schoolhouse, where he opened fire on several girls and took his
own life, authorities said.
Roberts, a father of three from nearby Bart Township and was not Amish, did
not appear to be targeting the Amish and apparently chose 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," said state police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller.
"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," Miller said.
The names of the dead were not immediately released.
Of the injured, a 6-year-old girl remained in critical condition and a
13-year-old girl was in serious condition at Penn State Children's Hospital,
spokeswoman Buehler Stranges said. She said the names of the children were not
being released.
Three girls, ages 8, 10 and 12, were flown to Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia, where they were out of surgery but remained in critical condition,
spokeswoman Peggy Flynn said.
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