Amish woman dies 18 years after being severely injured in deadly schoolhouse shooting
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — A woman who was seriously injured when a shooter killed five girls and injured her and four other girls during an attack on their one-room Amish school in Pennsylvania, died 18 years later, a funeral director said Thursday.
Rosanna S. King, 23, died Tuesday at her home and a funeral is planned for Friday at her home in the farming community of Paradise, according to an obituary from Furman Home for Funerals in Leola. Funeral director Philip Furman confirmed Thursday that she was among those shot at the West Nickel Mines Amish School in October 2006.
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk truck driver, barricaded himself in the school building, letting boys and several adults go. He tied up and shot 10 girls, then killed himself as police approached.
Rosanna King, a member of an Old Order Amish Church community, was 6 years old at the time and was considered the most seriously injured survivor. She had been shot in the head and the attack left her unable to speak and requiring a feeding tube. She was dependent on others for personal care and mobility.
A year laterHer family said in a statement that she recognized family members, smiled a lot and had limited physical movement. They said in 2007 that “the hardest part was watching her suffer.”
She will be buried at the Bart Cemetery.
Terri Roberts, Roberts’ mother, visited Rosanna King regularly and was inspired by the forgiveness the Amish community showed her and her family after the attack.
In a 2013 interviewRosanna’s father, Christ King, said he sometimes wondered whether he had truly forgiven the shooter.
“We have a lot of work to do to live up to what we say we are,” Christ King said then. “Everyone was talking about forgiveness, and I felt like that put a lot of pressure on us to live up to that.”
Roberts indicated in his suicide letters and during a final telephone conversation with his wife that he was tormented by unsubstantiated memories of sexually abusing several young relatives and by the death of his newborn daughter in 1997.
Ten days after the murders, the school building was demolished and a new building was built nearby.
The Amish prioritize their deeply Christian faith and family life, and eschew many modern conveniences. They wear traditional dress and use horses and carriages for much of their transportation. They often speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
Rosanna King’s death comes a day after a 14 year old student from Georgia was accused of killing two students and two teachers with an assault rifle at his high school, about an hour’s drive outside Atlanta.