Amish Community Buries Victims of School Shooting

A mournful silence hung over Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania yesterday as four of the five victims of Monday's horrific Amish school shooting were laid to rest.

|PIC1|The silence was broken only by the rattling of the horse-drawn buggies that streamed through the township bringing relatives and friends to the homes of the victims where the simple and private funerals took place.

Naomi Rose Ebersol, seven, Marian Fisher, 13, sisters Mary Liz Miller, eight, and Lena Miller, seven, were all laid to rest Thursday at a hilltop cemetery in Nickel Mines after they died in Monday's shooting rampage by milk lorry driver Charles Carl Roberts IV.

Each girl was buried in a plain pine coffin, using no metal in accordance with the Amish belief that all human remains should return to dust.

Each was dressed by female relatives in plain white dresses and laid out at home in open caskets as mourners arrived to pay respects, said Rita Rhodes, a local midwife who delivered two of the victims.

The funeral of the final victim, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, will take place today as doctors switched off a sixth girl's life support machine so she could be taken home to die her family by her side.

Memorial services and prayer vigils across Lancaster County and the entire U.S. gave individuals the opportunity to express their grief and sorrow over the shootings in the one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines.

The funerals took place as reports of selfless heroism in the moments before the shooting emerged.

"They knew they were going to be shot, and nobody begged not to be shot," said Rhodes.

According to ABC News, Rhodes reported that the oldest victim, Marian Fisher, allegedly stepped forward in an act of extraordinary bravery and told Roberts to "Shoot me first".

Her younger sister, Barbie, who survived, then reportedly said: "Shoot me second."

Four other girls aged between six and 13 remain hospitalised in critical or serious condition following the attack by gunman Roberts who police believe wanted to sexually assault the girls before he lined them up in front of the blackboard and shot them "execution-style".

One man told of girls in the classroom questioning Roberts as to why he was carrying out the attack before he opened fire.

Leroy Zook told the New York Times: "And he told them why: He's angry at God, he's just bitter. He told them that they're supposed to pray for him that he wouldn't do this."

Zook told the Times that he had shaken hands with the father-in-law of Roberts since the siege.

"I think it's helping him to meet people, too, and see that there's no grudge," he told the Times. "How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?"