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Family friend: Amish girl asked to be shot
to save others
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) --
One of the girls who died in Pennsylvania's Amish schoolhouse
massacre asked the killer to shoot her first in an apparent bid
to save the younger girls, a woman who spoke to the victim's
family said Friday.
Rita Rhoads, a nurse-midwife who delivered
13-year-old Marian Fisher as well as another victim, said Fisher
appealed to Charles Carl Roberts IV to shoot her first because
she thought it might allow younger girls to survive.
Rhoads said she did not know whether
Fisher in fact was shot first. Roberts shot 10 girls ages 6 to
13, killing five of them and then himself in Monday's rampage.
(Watch "shocked and sad" Amish express forgiveness -- 2:46)
Fisher's 11-year-old sister, Barbie,
appealed to Roberts to shoot her next, Rhoads said. Barbie
survived and was in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
recovering from shoulder, hand and leg injuries.
"Barbie has been talking and she said
Marian said, 'Shoot me first,"' Rhoads said. "Apparently what
she was trying to do was to save the younger girls."
Barbie, who attended her sister's funeral
Thursday before returning to the hospital, gave details of her
ordeal to relatives including her grandfather, who told Rhoads,
the midwife said in a telephone interview.
"It was very courageous of the girls to
offer themselves," Rhoads said. "God was really present to give
the girls that kind of courage."
Pennsylvania state police were not
immediately available for comment.
Roberts, 32, a local non-Amish milk truck
driver, attacked the one-room schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, a
farming community in Lancaster County about 60 miles west of
Philadelphia.
He allowed boys and adults to leave and
then tied the legs of the girls before shooting them, police
said.
Four of the girls including Marian Fisher
were buried Thursday and a fifth funeral was being buried
Friday.
The Amish, descendants of Swiss-German
settlers, are a traditionalist Christian denomination who place
particular importance on the Gospel message of forgiveness. They
believe in nonviolence, simple living and little contact with
the modern world. |
