Amish school in shooting rampage to reopen

updated 4:34 p.m. ET March 30, 2007

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Amish students who survived a shooting that killed five of their classmates are planning to move into a new building Monday, six months to the day after the massacre at the Pennsylvania school.

The one-room schoolhouse will come with a new name — the New Hope Amish School.

"It's just another part of the closure process, I guess, and a new beginning," said Mike Hart with the Bart Township Fire Department.

The new school is located within eyesight of the site of the West Nickel Mines Amish School, which was torn down Oct. 12. Ten days earlier, milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV shot 10 girls inside the school and then committed suicide as police closed in.

Four of the five wounded girls have returned to school, but the fifth remains in what Hart called "a comatose-type condition." The 6-year-old girl is fed by a feeding tube and is not able to communicate, he said.

Hart also said Roberts' widow, Marie, and their three children have moved from their home in the village of Georgetown, about a mile from the shooting, to another community within Lancaster County.

Charles Roberts, apparently tormented by an unconfirmed memory of having molested relatives 20 years earlier, and by the 1997 death of his own infant daughter, shot and killed himself. Amish families attended his burial service.

Hart said the new school, partially made of brick, was funded by donations to the accountability committee, donations made directly to the school board, and by in-kind contributions.

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