Amish thank those who helped

Tuesday will mark one year since the schoolroom
massacre.

NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) — Four days before the one-year anniversary of the massacre at West Nickel Mines Amish School, the students, their parents and the teacher thanked those who helped them cope with the brutal attack that left five girls dead.

They expressed gratitude to police, firefighters, those who provided medical care and “the many people who helped in many different ways ‘behind the scenes,’” the Lancaster New Era reported Friday.

“All that has been done to lift our burden is greatly appreciated and leaves us with a sense of indebtedness to everyone, but also makes us more aware of our gracious God to whom we owe a larger debt,” the statement said.

The paper also reported that in the year since the shooting in which five other girls were wounded but survived, some state troopers who were first at the scene have been building relationships with the victims and their families.

The troopers have long since resumed their normal duties, but their memories of Oct. 2 remain vivid.

“In the weeks following, I’d catch myself thinking about what happened,” Cpl. Leo Hegarty told the newspaper. “Maybe it was seeing my daughter, thinking how I would have handled such a thing if it happened to me.”

Scenes haunt them

Hegarty and a few other troopers described their experiences in the first on-the-record interviews they have given since the attack.

Trooper Samuel Laureto said his “daddy instinct” kicked in as he cradled wounded 11-year-old Barbie Fisher.

He had carried her outside the school where Charles C. Roberts IV had barricaded himself before shooting the children and committing suicide.

“It was such a chaotic thing,” he told the paper. “I was trying to hold her wounds together and keep her from going into shock. She kept wanting to go to sleep, but I just held her and talked to her as I would have my own daughter.”

Fisher survived and is recovering from her wounds.

“Thank God she is all right,” Laureto said. “And now, every time I see her, she’s so happy, always smiling.”

In a Sept. 20 interview, state police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller told The Associated Press he considers the troopers who were at the school that day to be heroes for risking their own lives to get inside after Roberts began shooting.

Hegarty recalled asking 13-year-old Esther King if she could walk, then trying to carry her outside before realizing Roberts had tied her feet together, along with the other girls’.

“I’ve seen a lot of things: Traffic fatalities. Homicides. Violence against others and children,” said Hegarty, a trooper for 12 years. “But this was the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen.”

At a June picnic in Nickel Mines with the firefighters and Amish families, Esther and her mother thanked him for what he did to help her. He has developed a new appreciation for the Amish.