Gunman kills 3 girls at Pennsylvania Amish school

UNITED STATES: A dairy truck driver with a grudge burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse on Monday and killed three girls execution style before committing suicide in the third deadly U.S. school shooting in the past week, authorities said.

Eight other girls were wounded and two of them were feared on the verge of death.

The heavily armed gunman, identified by authorities as Charles Carl Roberts, 32, had ordered the boys and some adults out of the classroom before opening fire on the girls.

Roberts, who was not Amish, had dropped his own three school-aged children at their bus stop in the morning, showing no sign of the rampage to come, Commissioner Jeffrey Miller of Pennsylvania state police said at a news conference.

But Roberts had left a rambling suicide note and letter to his wife and children, referring to an event 20 years ago for which he sought revenge, and he planned for a lengthy siege.

"He was angry with life and was angry at God. ... There may have been a loss of a child at some point in his life," Miller said, declining to elaborate. The Georgetown School classroom had 26 students aged 6 to 13. After Roberts ordered the 15 boys and some adults to leave, the victims were shot "at close range, executive style, firing into the back of the head," Miller said.

One of the dead was believed to be a teacher's aide.

Roberts fired three rounds from a shotgun and 13 from a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, police said. He also had a rifle, 600 rounds of ammunition, a stun gun, two knives and tools including a hammer, a hacksaw, pliers, wire, eye-bolts, rolls of tape and a bucket with a change of clothes.

Pennsylvania, Tuesday, Reuters