Eighteen years after a shooter attacked their one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls and seriously injuring four more, a woman has passed away, according to the funeral director on Thursday.
According to an obituary from Furman Home for Funerals in Leola, Rosanna S. King, 23, passed away at home on Tuesday. A funeral is scheduled for this Friday at her home in the rural village of Paradise. Philip Furman, the funeral director, verified on Thursday that she was one of the people shot at the West Nickel Mines Amish School in October 2006.
The 32-year-old milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV barricaded himself inside the schoolhouse, letting boys and a few adults flee while he tied up ten girls and shot them before killing himself as the police moved in.
At six years old, Rosanna Kingāa member of an Old Order Amish Church communityāwas thought to be the most seriously injured survivor. She was shot in the head, resulting in speech impairment and the need for a feeding tube. She needed help from others to move about and take care of herself.
Her family reported in a statement a year later that she had minimal movement, smiled frequently, and could identify family members.
“The hardest part has been to see her suffer,” they stated in 2007.
In the Bart Cemetery, she will be laid to rest. Terri Roberts, the mother of Roberts, visited Rosanna King frequently because she was moved by the forgiveness the Amish people showed her and her family following the attack.
Christ King, Rosanna’s father, admitted in a 2013 interview that there were moments when he questioned whether or not he had truly forgiven the gunman.
“We have a lot of work to do to live up to what we are bragged up to be,” Christ King stated. “Everyone was talking about this forgiveness thing, and I felt that was putting a lot of weight on our shoulders to live up to that.”
Roberts said he had been haunted by unproven memories of having raped a few young relatives and by the loss of his newborn daughter in 1997 in suicide notes he left behind and during a final phone conversation with his wife.
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Ten days after the murders, the schoolhouse was demolished, and a new one was built close by.
The Amish forgo many modern comforts in favor of their strong Christian faith and family life. Their mode of transportation is mostly horses and buggies, and they dress traditionally. They frequently speak Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect.
Rosanna King passed away the same week that a 14-year-old Georgian boy was accused of murdering two classmates and two teachers at his high school, which was located about an hour outside of Atlanta, with an assault-style rifle. Since 2006, there have been over 600 mass killings in the US.
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