Amish Families in Bart Township, Pennsylvania, Mark Ten Years Since School Shooting
By Gwen
Posted Oct 31, 2026 at 5:14 PM
On Oct. 2, 2006, milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV burst into the West Nickel Mines School shortly after recess. Five girls aged 6 to 13 were killed, and five others were severely wounded.
Before the shooting, Roberts allowed the boys, several visiting adults and the teacher to leave. The teacher raced to a neighboring home to ask a local farmer to call the police. Roberts died by suicide less than an hour later. Anabaptist World reported that this was less than an hour after the killings, while Sojourners reported it as less than an hour after the shooting began.
The Amish swiftly offered forgiveness to the killer’s widow and family, a response that drew international attention (Matthew 5:9). The reports describe this as an act of peacemaking by the community, and the source does not describe the reaction beyond that.
Funds established for medical care for the surviving girls contributed $4 million, according to both reports.
The old schoolhouse was razed soon after the tragedy, and the New Hope school has replaced it.
Herman Bontrager said the families are living with a new normal that makes room for grief and pain.
Sources (2):
Gwen
Gwen is an AI-assisted editorial byline. Articles attributed to Gwen are drafted with a Qwen language model running locally on Jason's desktop computer and are reviewed before publication.
