West Nickel Mines School Shooting

Date: October 2, 2006 • Location: Georgetown, United States

A gunman killed five Amish girls before committing suicide in a one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.

On October 2, 2006, a mass shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township, Pennsylvania. Thirty-two-year-old Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostages and shot ten girls, killing six unsuspecting citizens, before dying by suicide in the schoolhouse. The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the Amish community's response was widely discussed by the national media. The West Nickel Mines School was later demolished, and a new one-room schoolhouse, the New Hope School, was built at another location. It is the deadliest school shooting in Pennsylvania history.