Amish School Siege Was Well-Planned

Gunman Started Buying Supplies 6 Days Earlier, Made Checklist, Wrote 4 Notes

(CBS/AP) 
He sent the boys and several adults away and bound the girls together in a line at the blackboard. One of the girls in the class was able to escape with the boys, Miller said.

A piece of lumber found in the school had 10 large eyebolts spaced about 10 inches apart, suggesting that Roberts may have planned to truss up the girls and sexually assault them, Miller said.

The girls left in the room were shot at close range shortly after police arrived, Miller said.

The victims were identified as Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; and her sister Lena Miller, 7. Stoltzfus' sister was among the wounded.

Three other girls were in critical condition and two were in serious condition. They ranged in age from 6 to 13.

One of the girls in the hospital is Marian Fisher's sister, but her youngest sister escaped the schoolhouse, midwife Rita Rhoads said on CBS News' The Early Show.

"She told her mother that she was able to escape because one of the women who was allowed to leave the school told her to tiptoe out. And she mixed herself amongst the women and tiptoed out and praises God she's safe," Rhoads told co-anchor Harry Smith.

Some of those involved recalled their roles in chilling detail a day later. Emma Mae Zook, 20, who was teaching German and spelling at the school, told the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster she sensed trouble when Roberts came to her classroom door, wearing a baseball cap. "He stood very close to me to talk and didn't look in my face to talk," she said. Emma Mae and her mother, Barbie Zook, who was visiting the school, managed at one point to dart outside, run to a nearby farm and call police.

Deputy Coroner Janice Ballenger described the horrific task of examining 7-year-old Naomi, who weighed about 50 pounds, and was shot about 20 times. "Kneeling next to the body and counting all the bullet holes was the worst part," Ballenger said.

Church members visited with the victims' families Tuesday, preparing meals and doing household chores, while Amish elders planned the funerals.

"It's a tragedy we've never seen before," said the woman, whose father was a church bishop. Like many Amish, she declined to give her name. "They said it was a happy school," she said. "The children were happy, the teachers were happy."

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, spoke at a community prayer service Tuesday evening and said he was at the home of Roberts' father when an Amish neighbor came to comfort the family.

"He stood there for an hour, and he held that man in his arms, and he said, 'We will forgive you,'" Lefever said. "He extended the hope of forgiveness that we all need these days."

Sam Stoltzfus, 63, an Amish woodworker who lives a few miles away from the shooting scene, said the victims' families will be sustained by their faith.

"We think it was God's plan and we're going to have to pick up the pieces and keep going," he said. "A funeral to us is a much more important thing than the day of birth because we believe in the hereafter. The children are better off than their survivors."