Fourth Amish schoolgirl dies

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 2 (UPI) -- A fourth Amish girl has died in a nightmarish series of execution-style shootings carried out in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County.

A man invaded the schoolhouse Monday and shot most of the girls, killing three of them on the spot.

Truck driver Charles Carl Roberts, 32, then shot and killed himself, ABC News reported.

Now, a fourth girl has died hours after the shooting at a hospital, CNN said.

Roberts, who lived near the school in Nickel Mines, told his wife that he needed to avenge something that had happened 20 years ago, when he was 12, police said. Before he entered the school, he dropped his own three children off at their school bus stop.

At least one of the victims died in a trooper's arms, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said.

Miller said there is no evidence that Roberts had a grudge against the Amish, that he apparently targeted the school because it was easy to enter, WGAL-TV in Lancaster reported. He ordered the boys and several teachers and aides to leave and barricaded the doors with lumber he brought in his pickup truck.

"It's obvious to us that this was a premeditated hostage scenario," Miller said. "I believe, based on what the investigators have so far, he intended not to walk out of there alive, but he also intended to kill innocent victims."

Roberts tied the girls' hands and feet and shot victims execution style.

Some of the victims were taken to Hershey Medical Center in Hershey and Children's Hospital in Philadelphia -- both certified in pediatric trauma.

It was the third deadly school shooting in less than a week.

A 53-year-old man entered a Colorado high school Wednesday, killing one girl hostage before killing himself. A Wisconsin high school student is the suspect in the fatal shooting of a principal.