GEORGETOWN, Pa.-
For the fourth time in two days, the Amish gathered for the funeral of a young girl shot by an school intruder and solemnly drove to a farmland cemetery by horse and buggy for her burial.
More than 40 buggies trailed a funeral home car, two mounted state troopers and the body of 12-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus in a hand-sawn wooden coffin under a cold, steady drizzle early Friday afternoon. Bearded men in black suits and women in dresses and bonnets attended services Thursday for the four other girls killed during Monday’s shootings, two of them sisters.
A sixth girl shot during the attack was reported in grave condition. County coroner G. Gary Kirchner said he had been contacted by a physician at Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey who said doctors expected to take the girl off life support.
Four others remain hospitalized.
State troopers blocked off all roads into the Nickel Mines village during the funerals Thursday and Friday.
Like those the day before, Friday’s procession black buggies and carriages also passed the home of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the 32-year-old milk truck driver who took the girls hostage, tied them up and shot them before killing himself.
“They were just little people,” Benjamin Nieto, 57, said he watched the processions from a friend’s porch Thursday. “They never got a chance to do anything.”
The funerals Thursday were for 13-year-old Marian Fisher, 7-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersol and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.
The girls, in white dresses made by their families, were laid to rest in graves dug by hand. Amish custom calls for simple wooden coffins, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle. Amish funerals are conducted in German and focus on God, not on commemorating the dead. There is no singing, but ministers read hymns and passages from the Bible and an Amish prayer book.
The attack was so traumatic that there is talk in the community that the schoolhouse may soon be razed. Many of the Amish have embraced Roberts’ wife, Marie, and three young children, focusing on their belief in forgiveness.
Lloyd Welk, Marie Roberts’ grandfather, was the only neighbor outside waiting for the last funeral procession as a steady rain tapered to a slight drizzle late Friday morning.
Welk said 16 members of the Roberts family, including Marie Roberts and her three children, had a meal together Thursday night. There was a special prayer before the meal, he said.
“I think she’s holding up real good,” Welk said. She expects to move back into her home and put her children back in school, he said.
Marie Roberts has been avoiding news coverage to protect the children, who have spent the last few days playing ball and riding their bicycles, Welk said.
Donors from around the world are pledging money to help the families of the dead and wounded. Amounts ranging from $1 to $500,000 have been received and could help defray mounting medical bills.
At the behest of Amish leaders, a fund was also set up for the killer’s widow and children.
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Associated Press writer Martha Raffaele and photographer Carolyn Kaster contributed to this report.
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