Contractors demolish Amish schoolhouse

The Amish of West Nickel Mines, Pa. don't believe in using modern machines or technology, but it was heavy construction equipment that razed the one-room schoolhouse Wednesday where a gunman fatally shot five girls and injured five others.

The Amish relied on an outside demolition crew with heavy machinery to bring closure to the painful chapter in their peaceful community.

Ў°I think the Amish leaders made the right decision," Mike Hart, a spokesman for the Bart Fire Company, said as loaders lifted debris into dump trucks to be hauled away.

Ў°It seems this is a type of closure for them," Hart said, as a group of mostly Amish gathered to watch as the schools bell tower toppled and the walls crumpled.

The quaint schoolhouse had been boarded up since the killings, with schooling moved to a nearby farm. The Amish planned to leave a quiet pasture where the schoolhouse stood.

The destruction of the West Nickel Mines Amish School came a week after the solemn funerals of four of the five girls killed by gunman Charles Carl Roberts VI. Roberts came armed with a shotgun, rifle, handgun and a stun gun and killed himself after shooting the girls.

The five girls wounded in the Oct. 2 shooting are still believed to be hospitalized. The hospitals are no longer providing any information about the patients at the request of their families.

Hart said private contractors were handling the demolition, and the debris would be hauled to a landfill.

Source:Xinhua/Agencies