A woman who was severely injured when a gunman killed five girls and wounded her and four other girls during a mass shooting at their one-room, rural Amish schoolhouse has died 18 years later, a funeral director said on Thursday.
Rosanna King, 23, died at her home in the farming community of Paradise, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday and a funeral is planned there on Friday, according to an obituary from Furman Home for Funerals in Leola.
Funeral director Philip Furman confirmed to the Associated Press on Thursday that she was among those shot at the West Nickel Mines Amish school in October 2006.
At the time of the shooting she was just six, one of the youngest affected and the most severely wounded. King was shot in the head and lived the rest of her foreshortened life needing a wheelchair and unable to talk, fed through a tube and requiring constant care. She also suffered seizures, at times severe.
A year after the tragedy, which many who were directly affected have since referred to as “the happening”, King’s family said she was able to recognize relatives and smiled a lot but had limited physical movement. They added to the statement they issued in 2007 that “the hardest part has been to see her suffer”.
The gunman was local resident Charles Carl Roberts IV, who was not of the Amish faith, a 32-year-old milk truck driver. He turned up at the tiny schoolhouse in the remote village with a handgun and a bag of paraphernalia and barricaded himself inside.
He let boys and several adults go but tied up 10 girls and shot them, before killing himself as police closed in. In addition to the suffering of those wounded and families bereaved, some who were let go physically unharmed experienced deep and lasting psychological trauma.
Roberts’ mother, Terri Roberts, regularly visited King, inspired by the forgiveness the Amish community expressed to her and her family soon after the attack, even as some later explained the emotional complexities and struggle of such a gesture that is deeply ingrained in the faith.
“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,” Rosanna’s father, Christ King, said in a 2013 interview.
The news of Rosanna King’s death came one day after a fatal shooting at a Georgia school.
