A GUNMAN who killed five girls at a rural Amish school in the US told his wife before the shooting that he had molested two young members of his family 20 years ago, police have revealed.
Charles Roberts made the claim during a phone call just befor
e he started shooting the girls and police now say it is possible the attack was sexually motivated.
State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller said Roberts had sexual lubricant and plastic handcuffs with him when he took the students hostage along with weapons and supplies for a long stand-off.
Roberts lined up a group of girls against a blackboard, chained them together and shot them before killing himself in the third fatal school shooting in America in a week.
Police officers investigating the attack in Pennsylvania, in which five others were wounded, said the 32-year-old father-of-three appeared to be tormented by "dreams" of molesting again.
"He states in his suicide note that he had dreams about doing what he did 20 years ago again," Mr Miller said.
Roberts' family members say they knew nothing of the molestation – which would have happened when he was young himself – and police have also been unable to confirm the claims.
The two latest victims of the shooting, aged seven and nine, died from their injuries early yesterday.
Four girls aged between six and 12 are in critical condition and a 13-year-old is in a serious condition in hospital, officials said.
Mr Miller said suicide notes left by Roberts for his family, and the phone call to his wife during the siege, showed that he had become "angry with his life, angry with God".
But the gunman had no criminal record and has left the community not only distraught but also in the dark as to why he massacred the youngsters in the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School in Lancaster County.
His victims were Amish, a religious group which shuns many modern conveniences and emphasises piety, modesty and community derived from a literal reading of the Bible.
Roberts was not Amish, but came from Lancaster County and lived just a mile from the school in Bart Township.
There is no evidence he had a grudge against them.
Neighbours and friends said he was a Christian, a Philadelphia Eagles fan and an ordinary family man, who drove a truck for a dairy.
According to his wife, he was loving, supportive and thoughtful and was an "exceptional father" to his seven-year-old daughter and two sons, a baby and a four-year-old.
His grandfather said the shooting did not make any sense.
"He was never a problem. He was a family man," he told Pennsylvania's The Patriot-News, while his grandmother described him as a "good son and a good father".
Roberts, who arrived at the school with three guns, a stun gun, two knives and 600 rounds of ammunition, released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with babies before barricading himself and the girls into the school.
The tragedy is the third school shooting in a week in the US, and, experts say, the majority of attacks in these circumstances are motivated by revenge.
James Alan Fox, professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, Boston, said: "If you want to find young kids and get even with society, a school is an ideal place. They represent a place where people may have
felt unhappy, their self-esteem was threatened, where they were bullied, and where they decide to get revenge."
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