The group also confirmed that no public memorial events are planned on the anniversary, but the school that was built to replace the scene of the shooting will be closed for the day. Four of the five injured girls have been in school since December. The fifth, Rosanna King, who was 6 at the time of the shootings at the West Nickel Mines Amish School, suffered a severe head injury and is unable to talk, uses a reclining wheelchair and must be fed by a tube.
Her family said in the statement that she "smiles a lot, big smiles" and recognizes family members. A second severely injured victim recently underwent reconstructive surgery to improve her shoulder and arm. A third girl still suffers vision problems from a head wound. Virginia Tech trip The committee said that reaching out to others who have endured similar tragedies has also been part of the healing.
It disclosed that family members recently traveled to Blacksburg, Va. Roberts IV, who killed himself police closed in. Roberts, a year-old father of three who lived about a mile away, tied up the girls and shot them after ordering the boys and adults to leave the school. Investigators found evidence he was haunted by his infant daughter's death in and by an uncorroborated memory of having molested young female relatives 20 years earlier.
On Sunday, Christ Stoltzfus will visit the grave of his daughter, Anna Mae, who was 12 years old when she died. She is buried in a local cemetery, with the other girls who were killed.
Their old-world way of life has not changed. The Amish still eschew cars and do not rely on phones, factors which meant that 10 years ago, news of the shooting was slow to reach parents. But the inhabitants of Nickel Mines do now have closer relationships with outsiders, after so many came to their aid. And in the aftermath of other mass shootings, especially those at Virginia Tech and at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, bereaved and despairing families have turned to the Amish for advice.
Even so, there are effects that linger and details of the event that have never been well understood. Aaron Esh Jr sat in his gas-lit family kitchen. From outside came the sound of rain and horse-drawn carriages on a country road. In all directions, the rolling landscape was dotted with grain silos, cornfields and barns. Public accounts usually summarize how Charles Roberts, 32, a non-Amish local resident, entered the school house on a Monday morning, and how after the teacher fled to find help, he ordered all the boys to leave and then shot the girls.
Not just the girls. When Roberts began tying the girls up and pulled down the window shades, Esh Sr said, children began weeping with fear. Just before he barricaded himself and the girls inside, Roberts let the boys go. Aaron Jr went outside, then panicked because his little brother Joel was still inside. Joel, then seven, was the last boy out. Seven minutes after the teacher raised the alarm, state troopers arrived.
It is believed Roberts planned to sexually molest the girls during a lengthy siege. He told them, survivors said, that he was angry at God because his baby daughter had died despite his prayers. He also said he had molested two young female relatives when a teen, a claim that was never proven. When the troopers came , he fired at each of the 10 girls, then shot himself dead.
The community convulsed in shock and grief. The boys had a lucky escape, so everyone said. But they themselves were traumatized. It bothered him and other boys that they had not done something.
Some of them are still struggling with that, 10 years on. Within days, the community knocked down the school house. In Blacksburg, Virginia, a disturbed student killed 32 students and members of staff. Many in Nickel Mines were distressed all over again. Aaron Jr went through a growth spurt that winter, growing from 5ft 1in to 5ft 6in, but his weight dropped from lb to 90lb. The boy would come home early from school, having panic attacks.
Like most of the survivors and bereaved, he and his brother accepted counselling from outside professional therapists. But Aaron Jr was depressed. In the summer of , he ended up in a secure hospital ward, close to death from starvation. He spent many painful months recovering, the family said. Aaron Jr said that around that time, three state troopers came to visit him. They sat outside on the porch, he said, and told him what happened at the school was not his fault.
If he had tried to intervene, they said, the outcome would probably have been a lot worse. At one point I had had thoughts of suicide. Then he smiled. He works in the construction industry. Two years ago, Barbara Fisher, now 20, got married. Ten years ago, she was shot multiple times in the shoulder and hand.
0コメント