{"id":298426,"date":"2026-10-02T15:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T15:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/298426\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T15:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T15:38:08","slug":"police-commissioner-recalls-mass-casualty-scene-of-amish-school-shooting-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/298426\/","title":{"rendered":"Police commissioner recalls ‘mass casualty scene’ of Amish school shooting 20 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) \u2014 Oct. 2, 2006, is a day former Pennsylvania State Police commissioner Jeffrey Miller said he\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n

Miller was just about to speak on stage at the University of Maryland when he got word of a situation in a rural Lancaster County community called Nickel Mines.<\/p>\n

A gunman, named Charles Roberts IV, had entered an Amish school house, boarded up the door and tied up several girls. A school teacher, Emma Mae Zook, was able to run out and get a neighbor to call 911. The shooter\u2019s wife had also called 911 after she found what appeared to be a suicide note. Roberts ended up killing five young girls before killing himself inside the school house.<\/p>\n

Miller said Maryland State Police flew him to the scene in one of their helicopters.<\/p>\n

\"First<\/p>\n

First responders on scene of a deadly shooting at an Amish school house in Nickel Mines, Pa., on Oct. 2, 2006. (WHP)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like a mass casualty scene,\u201d Miller said in a video call. \u201cThere were bandages, and it was obvious that there was a lot of triage that occurred. And of course, once I saw what I saw inside the school, you know, I knew the complete gravity of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for the first responders, for the troopers that arrived, I mean obviously it was a very traumatic experience for them. They wanted to get into the school right away. We didn’t want to endanger the children inside the school and tried to negotiate with the shooter, but it became obvious near the end that he wasn’t going to negotiate.”<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd once they heard gunfire, they immediately attacked the school from the standpoint of trying to break through the barricades and the things that he had piled in front of doors and windows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller was tasked with leading the investigation, along with getting information to the many members of the media who flocked to an otherwise quiet and private community.<\/p>\n

Investigators interviewed Robert\u2019s family members and investigated statements he made in 911 calls in which he reportedly said he\u2019d molested female relatives years before and was tormented by the memories. He\u2019d also reportedly told his wife he\u2019d never recovered from the loss of their daughter, who died shortly after her birth.<\/p>\n

Miller said Roberts had likely intended to do more harm to the girls that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThankfully, troopers were able to respond much quicker than he expected,\u201d Miller said, \u201cand so while there was still a great deal of loss of life and injury, some of the things that I believe he intended to do, he could not do because we were already on scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty years later, Miller said he thinks often of the families involved, and teacher Emma Mae Zook.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn’t want to leave her kids for sure, but had she not done that, I feel that probably everyone would have been killed, including her,\u201d Miller said, tearing up.<\/p>\n

The decision she made to run to a farm and be able to access a telephone and contact police was a really very courageous decision that she made, and it was one that I credit with saving lives.\"First<\/p>\n

First responders on scene of a deadly shooting at an Amish school house in Nickel Mines, Pa., on Oct. 2, 2006. (WHP)<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s helped teach other law enforcement agencies about how Pennsylvania State Police handled the investigation, and he hopes the world never forgets what happened in Nickel Mines that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came away with the feeling like, if it can happen in a small, you know, one room Amish schoolhouse in southern Lancaster County in the middle of nowhere, it can happen anywhere, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller said he also thinks often about how quick the Amish community was to forgive the gunman\u2014something he said seemed to take a lot of outsiders by surprise.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s any one light to shine through the tragedy, he said, it\u2019s how the community came together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just thankful for the response of all the first responders from the Pennsylvania State Police, our troopers, the EMTs and medics, the air life support teams, the fire departments, the volunteers, all of the people in Lancaster County that really came forward in an effort to help at a very difficult time,” Miller said. “Just want to say thanks to them, and I haven’t forgotten the work that they did because anyone who was there was certainly affected and impacted by it, but nobody was impacted like the families of the victims.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) \u2014 Oct. 2, 2006, is a day former Pennsylvania State Police commissioner Jeffrey Miller…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-298426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}