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Heartbreak In a Small Town

Originally posted Thursday October 05, 2006 12:00 PM EDT

State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller displayed Roberts's checklist of supplies for the attack. Photo by: Mary Altaffer / AP

The attack shattered the tranquility of the Amish community, where many of the men work in farming or the making of small crafts. Because of the lack of television and telephones inside homes it took authorities hours to track down the parents of students in the school. But when many of the Amish elders heard the news, their normal reserve broke down. "They are stoic," says Dwilyn Beiler, a local resident with close ties to the Amish who visited the family of two of the victims with his wife. "But we fell into each other's arms and cried. They're as human as anyone else."

And they are also generous of spirit. At an evening vigil on Oct. 2 the pastor for the Roberts family appeared and told how one Amish neighbor had already gone to the killer's parents and offered forgiveness for the shooting. In a statement, the parents, Chuck and Terry Roberts, declared, "Our hearts are torn and anguished at the tragedy and loss we have experienced as a family and in the Amish community."

Outside the home of Rachel Ann Stoltzfus, her brother Raymond, 14, attired in traditional overalls and wide-brimmed straw hat, watched over two of their younger siblings, Emma, 4, and David, 2. His parents, Daniel and Annie, were at the hospital watching over Rachel Ann. Raymond was pulling for his sister, who, he explained, "likes to play dolls and stuff." Now she was struggling to pull through, with a shattered jaw and wounds in her shoulder and side. Looking out over the fields, Raymond could still not comprehend how little children could be shot in cold blood. "I just can't see why that man thought he had to do this," he says. "Did he know what he was doing, or what?"

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