Rosanna King, Survivor of Deadly 2006 Amish Schoolhouse Shooting, Dies at 23

Mar. 15, 2025

The site of the West Nickel Mines Amish School shooting.Photo:STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty

STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty

A 23-year-old survivor of the 2006 Pennsylvania school shooting that took place at an Amish schoolhouse has died, nearly 18 years after the shooting occurred.

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, the family of Rosanna S. King announced that she died earlier that day at her home in Paradise, Pa., a rural Amish town in Lancaster County. According to anobituaryfrom Furman Home for Funerals in Leola, her parents were Christian E. King and Mary Elizabeth Stoltzfus King, and she was a member of the Old Order Amish Church.

Philip Furman, a funeral director at the home, confirmed to theAssociated Pressthat King was one of the victims who was shot at the West Nickel Mines Amish School in October 2006.

King was 6 years old at the time of the shooting and was attending school at West Nickel Mines when an armed shooter named Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk truck driver, arrived at the school and took several hostages, the outlet reported.

Although Roberts ordered several people in the schoolhouse to leave, he took 10 young girls hostage, including King. He shot the girls, killing five of them, before killing himself as police entered the small building.

An Amish horse and buggy turns down a road near the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School.STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty

According to the local outletLancasterOnline, King was considered one of the most severely injured survivors of the shooting. The outlet reported she was shot in the head, which left her with severe brain trauma and was unable to talk or walk. She used a feeding tube to eat and was dependent on others for care.

Although she was taken off life support two days after the shooting at her family’s request, she made a partial recovery, and LancasterOnline reported over a decade ago that she attended an Amish school for children with special needs.

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The shooter’s mother, Terri Roberts, often used to visit with King, according to the AP. Ina 2013 interviewwith the outlet, she called King a “beautiful young woman,” but said that “life is not as it should’ve been for this little girl.”

“So my mind will never forget the hardship that day has caused in many people’s lives,” she said at the time.

In the same 2013 article, Rosanna’s father opened up about how many members of the local Amish community turned to forgiveness when it came to the shooter and his family.

“We have a lot of work to do to live up to what we are bragged up to be,” he said 11 years ago. “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.”

Speakingwith PEOPLE in 2016, a decade after the shooting, the father of victim Anna Mae Stolzfus said: “We’ve all found a certain degree of healing. The pain isn’t as sharp. The one thing I’d like to relate so that people can understand is — grief is a journey, and at first the mountains are really steep and the valleys are deep and dark, and then it gradually levels out.”

source: people.com