Amish school shooting’s anniversary to be ‘normal’

Empty pasture is all that’s left on the site of the one-room Amish schoolhouse where a gunman left five girls dead and five others wounded two years ago, and the anniversary of the massacre was expected to pass quietly Thursday.

“We’re going to try to go on with just a normal day,” Bart Township Fire Chief Curt Woerth said. “We’ve been in contact with the families – they don’t want anything, and neither do we, really.”

The New Hope Amish School was to be closed Thursday, said teacher Emma Mae Zook. It replaced the schoolhouse where 32-year-old milk truck driver Charlie Roberts barricaded himself and the girls before he shot them and killed himself with a 9 mm handgun.

Four of the five surviving girls have returned to classes, although some require continuing treatment for their wounds. The fifth remains in a nonresponsive coma, according to Dr. Holmes Morton, a physician who runs the Clinic for Special Children in nearby Strasburg.