What Ignited Gunman's School Rampage?
Charles Carl Roberts IV, apparently spurred by a grudge two decades old, wrote his wife what authorities described as suicide notes, took guns and ammunition and went to a nearby one-room schoolhouse Monday, where he killed three girls, critically injured seven more, and took his own life, authorities said.
Roberts was armed with a loaded 12-gauge shotgun, a 9 millimeter shotgun, a stun gun, plastic handcuffs, enough two-by-fours to board up all the exits, six rounds of ammunition and a change of clothes, reports CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.
"I don't believe there was any sort of malice toward the Amish necessarily," State police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said on CBS News' The Early Show. "I think he sought out a target of opportunity where he had female victims that were young in age, between the ages of 6 and 13, and I think that was really the focus, a place he could get into and out of."
Roberts, 32, of Bart, was "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20 years ago," Miller said Monday, adding Tuesday morning, "He would have been 12 years old."
Roberts, now a father of three, also had a daughter who died as an infant.
Two more schoolchildren died overnight from the attack. Three girls (two students and a teacher's aide), and Roberts, died at the school, authorities said.
State police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said the two girls who died in hospitals early Tuesday had suffered "very severe injuries, but the other ones are coming along very well."
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 in Hershey, Buehler Stranges said. She said the names of the children were not being released.
Most of the victims were shot at point-blank range.
"When I arrived at the scene, many of our troopers were covered in blood from ... bringing children out and being with them," Miller told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "The one trooper, you know, the poor little girl had part of her head blown off by a round, and he held her in his arms and was with her while she was still alive for almost an hour, until she passed."
According to investigators, Roberts had finished his milk deliveries before dawn Monday, dropped his own children off at their school bus stop, then at about 10 a.m. pulled up at the Amish school, which had about 25 to 30 students ranging in age from six to 13.
The small one-room schoolhouse is the size of a two-car garage, reports Pitts.
Roberts released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with infants, barred the doors with desks and wood and secured them with nails, bolts and flexible plastic ties. He then made the girls line up along a blackboard and tied their feet together.
Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the children if police didn't back away from the building. Within seconds, troopers heard gunfire, and found his body when they were able to get inside.
From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was "angry at life, he was angry at God," and co-workers said his mood had darkened in recent days, Miller said.
Neighbors and others said they saw no indications of trouble like this brewing.
"They're a fine Christian family. It's ironic and it's heartbreaking," said Lois Fiester, a relative of Roberts who was standing outside the family's modest tan ranch house.
In a statement released to reporters, Marie Roberts called her husband "loving, supportive and thoughtful."
"He was an exceptional father," she said. "He took the kids to soccer practice and games, played ball in the backyard and took our 7-year-old daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a diaper."
"Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today," Marie Roberts said in a statement read by family spokesman Dwight LeFever. "Above all, please pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our family and children."
There won't be any bitterness from the Amish community toward Roberts' widow and children, former Amishman Aaron Meyers said.
"I think there's compassion for his wife, for his children, and great sadness that he did what he did, that he couldn't cope with his own life," Meyers told Early Show's Smith.
Although the shootings resembled an attack last week at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man took several girls hostage in a school classroom and then killed one of them and himself, Miller said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was not a copycat crime.
"We have to keep school safety on the front burner and stop this common refrain of, 'we never thought it could happen here,'" Kenneth S. Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services, said on The Early Show. "If it can happen in a one-classroom Amish community, it can and will happen anywhere in the country."