Amish girl reportedly told killer: "Shoot me"

GEORGETOWN, Pa. — A 13-year-old Amish girl killed by a schoolhouse gunman asked to be shot first in an attempt to buy time for the younger students, according to accounts that surfaced Friday.

The girl's 11-year-old sister then reportedly said, "Shoot me next."

Two survivors of the shooting told their parents that Marian Fisher asked to be shot first, apparently hoping the younger girls would be let go, according to Leroy Zook, an Amish dairy farmer.

"Shoot me and leave the other ones loose," Marian has been quoted as saying, Zook said. His daughter, Emma Mae Zook, was the teacher who ran from the schoolhouse to a farm to summon police.

Amish builder David Lapp said Marian's sister, Barbie, who is recovering from gunshot wounds in her shoulder, hand and leg, provided one of the accounts from her bed at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"Her sister remembers it," Lapp said.

Trooper Linette Quinn said investigators have not conducted any interview that confirms the story but also said the investigation into the deadly assault Monday at the one-room schoolhouse is incomplete.

It was not known if Fisher was shot first.

Parents of two survivors also told Leroy Zook that the children questioned the gunman after the adults left.

"They just asked him why he's doing this. He said he's angry with God," Zook said.

Another account of what occurred inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School was related by Rita Rhodes, a Mennonite nurse-midwife who had delivered Marian Fisher, who was buried Thursday.

Marian had been bound with the other children in the school. "They were already tied up; they knew they were going to be shot," Rhodes said, and "Barbie says that Marian said she'd be first. And then Barbie said, 'Shoot me next.' ...

"I think it was just an amazing display of courage. God really had to be present in that schoolhouse to give them that courage," said Rhodes, who had told the story to ABC News and others.

She said she heard about what happened from Ruben Fisher, the girls' grandfather, and Leroy Zook.

"Barbie said somewhere during all the conversations" in the one-room schoolhouse, the gunman "asked the girls to pray for him," said Rhodes, of nearby Quarryville, Pa.

"He said he hated God, but yet he must have realized that God was going to decide his future, and that the girls had a link to God. So he asked them to pray for him."

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, took 10 girls, ages 6 to 13, hostage Monday, tied them up and shot them, killing five, before killing himself at the one-room schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia.

Roberts, a local non-Amish milk-truck driver, had allowed boys and adults to leave before shooting the girls, police said.

Five girls remain hospitalized.

The accounts of young courage came as another victim was buried Friday. More than 40 buggies splashed along country roads behind a funeral-home car, two mounted state troopers and a carriage with the body of Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, in a hand-sawn wooden coffin.

Four other girls killed during Monday's shootings, two of them sisters, were buried Thursday at the same hilltop graveyard.

Also Friday, a victim who was taken off life support and brought home to die in the past two days continued to breathe on her own, according to Daniel Esh, 57, an Amish artist.

The 6-year-old girl, whom he identified as Rosanna King, was returned to Hershey Medical Center for further treatment, Esh said Friday. He said he learned the information from other members of the Amish community. He also heard that the child was able to squeeze a relative's hand.

A Hershey spokeswoman said the hospital would not provide information regarding the victims at the request of family members.