By MARK SCOLFORO
The Associated Press
GEORGETOWN, Pa. — Several of the first emergency workers to respond to the scene where five Amish schoolgirls were killed and five others were wounded two weeks ago said Monday that they remain haunted by the scene they witnessed inside the one-room schoolhouse.
“We’ve all had our moments; I’m not ashamed to tell you that,” said Bart Township Fire Chief Curt Woerth, adding that one of the members of their fire company had two sons in West Nickel Mines Amish School that day. He did not identify the person; about half of the township’s fire company members are Amish.
“There’s a bond between each and every one of us who were in that school yard that day that will never go away,” Woerth said at a news conference Monday night at the township fire hall.
They arrived at the scene on Oct. 2 in rural Lancaster County where a milk-truck driver, 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts IV, began firing shortly before police stormed the building, then committed suicide.
“Nothing went through my mind. I just did what I needed to do,” said Ian Solodky, a paramedic who performed triage at the scene and later drove in an ambulance with two of the injured girls.
Jodi Lefevre, a rescuer with Bart Township Fire Company, called the scene “organized chaos.”
“We had a lot of patients, and very few of us, so it was very overwhelming,” she said. The rescue workers treated the girls and comforted them as much as they could, she said, adding that the image of the scene remains with her.
“Most of us have children of our own, so that’s going through my head,” she said.
The rescuers worked at the scene for about 45 minutes as the children were taken away by ambulance and helicopter to hospitals. None would get into specifics of patient treatment or comment on Roberts. None of them knew Roberts before the shooting, they said.
Roberts had told his wife his actions were somehow related to his having molested two young female relatives 20 years earlier, a claim investigators have not confirmed. He also said he was angry at God for the death of a newborn daughter in 1997.
Marie Roberts answered the door Monday night at the family’s home near the fire hall and told a reporter to leave.
Others have described a gruesome scene in which the interior of the school was spattered with blood, and there were frantic efforts to free the victims from the ankle restraints Roberts had employed, give them first aid and transport them to hospitals.
There was evidence Roberts had planned the attack for several days at least - his equipment included three firearms, a stun gun, tape and construction materials to barricade the doors and windows. Roberts brought a sexual lubricant, which police said suggested he may have intended to molest the girls.
Adding to the heartbreaking story was an account, confirmed by police, that one of the students, 13-year-old Marian Fisher, asked Roberts to shoot her first and let the other girls go free. Roberts told the girls they were going to “pay for my daughter,” and Marian was the first of five he killed.
The school’s 15 boys, one girl, the teacher and three other adults inside when Roberts arrived were able to escape from the school before Roberts began firing.
The school building was demolished Thursday, and the male students resumed classes last week in a temporary facility on a farm in the Nickel Mines area.
The Bart Township Fire Hall, where the emergency workers spoke Monday, served as a makeshift command center in the aftermath of the shooting, a place for Amish families to obtain information from authorities, obtain counseling and meet to discuss the future of the school.
In all, 69 fire companies from eight counties provided help during the incident and afterward. The fire department’s ladies auxiliary provided 9,000 meals in the week to those providing help after the tragedy.
The fire department continues to receive around 700 pieces of mail daily, officials said.