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CEDAR SPRINGS, Mich. — A 33-year-old man's decision to run away with a 15-year-old Amish girl has left his family nearly destitute. Julissa Jaimes says she and the couple's four children are unsure of their future as her husband, Osvaldo, sits in a Mexican jail awaiting possible extradition to Michigan. Michigan authorities say he planned to marry the teenager. The Cedar Springs resident was arrested Monday trying to enter Mexico at the Laredo, Texas, border with the girl who was listed as a runaway. "I'm just waiting for an eviction notice or a shut-off notice so the FIA (Family Independence...

Denise George never thought she was breaking the law. Living on the outskirts of Dayton, Armstrong County, she didn't think twice about helping her Amish neighbors — whose religion prevents them from owning vehicles — make a trip or two into town during the week for supplies and other reasons. That is, until she got a letter informing her that her actions were illegal. The story is similar for Woodie Kirkwood, of Dayton. A longtime driver of the Amish, Kirkwood was a little shocked and upset when he received two letters warning him of the same. The letters, sent by...

BARR TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- Controversy over a manmade outhouse could end up with members of an Amish community in jail. Neighbors of the Cambria County Amish community complained about the bathroom facilities the Amish are using because they take waste from their outhouse and dump it onto their property. The property is in the same area near underground wells for nearby residents. The complaints made to the Cambria County Sewage Enforcement Agency were investigated and citations were filed against the Amish property owners. The owners said they refuse to pay any fines, because it is against their religious beliefs, and...

NICKEL MINES, Pa. The county coroner says at least six people were killed in a shooting at a one-room Amish schoolhouse, where state police said earlier a gunman killed "a number" of people Monday in Pennsylvania's bucolic Lancaster County. "So far six confirmed dead and the helicopters are pulling into (Lancaster General Hospital) like crazy," Lancaster County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner said. It was unclear if the shooter was among the six. State police Cpl. Ralph Striebig had said earlier the shooter was among the dead, and a number of people were injured. Three girls, all critical with gunshot wounds,...

HONEY BROOK, Pa. (Map, News) - A simple traffic stop in Chester County ended up involving a buggy and a truck before police captured a man wanted on warrants from three counties. State police say a trooper tried to pull a car over Thursday on Route 322 but the driver took off, drove into a parking lot, abandoned the vehicle and ran through neighborhoods and fields. He jumped into a moving Amish buggy, but jumped out when troopers closed in and ran into a cornfield. Then a motorist in a dry wall truck offered troopers a lift and they surrounded...

Lancaster, PA - Civil rights advocates criticized plans by the Police Department to map the county's Amish communities, calling it racial profiling. The LCPD's counterterrorism bureau plans to identify Amish enclaves in order to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to "violent, ideologically based extremism," said Deputy Chief Michael P. Drowning on Thursday. "We want to know where the Shakers, Quakers and Amish are so we can reach out to those communities," said Drowning, who heads the counterterrorism bureau. Downing said the plan is still in its early stages, but the LCPD wants to work with...

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Indianapolis - Five people were killed Sunday afternoon when the van they were riding in flipped on Interstate 69. The van was carrying families from Amish communities in New Haven and Rockville. State police say at one point last night they had seven helicopters lined up in the northbound lane of I-69 to transport the victims. Some were taken to Indianapolis hospitals, others to Fort Wayne. Five were pronounced dead at the scene. State police say around 4:45 pm Sunday afternoon, a 15-passenger van was headed southbound on I-69 when it left the roadway, crossed the median and flipped several...

Elizabethtown, Pa. - ONE year ago today, a shooter entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa., dismissed all but 10 girls, and fired at them execution-style, killing five before shooting himself. Within hours, the Amish community forgave the killer and his family. News of the instant forgiveness stunned the outside world – almost as much as the incident itself did. Many pundits lauded the Amish, but others worried that hasty forgiveness was emotionally unhealthy... ...Members of the Amish community began offering words and hugs of forgiveness when the blood was barely dry on the schoolhouse floor... ...As the...

The Jefferson County sheriff said he and his deputies received several death threats from an Amish bishop with regard to a child custody dispute, prompting him to have the regional SWAT team on standby Tuesday. Sheriff Fred Abdalla was ordered to take Wilma Troyer's daughters, ages 21 months and 9 months, as part of a domestic dispute with her husband who currently lives with his family in Potter County, Pa. The sheriff said he and one other deputy went alone up to the school to serve the court order, but said Troyer, an Amish teacher, instead locked herself in the...

PHILADELPHIA - An Amish community that lost five girls in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse shooting massacre last year has donated money to the widow of the gunman, the community said Wednesday. The Nickel Mines Accountability Committee, which was set up to handle more than $4.3 million in donations from around the world after the shootings, said it had given an unspecified "contribution" to Marie Roberts, a mother of three. Her husband, Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk truck driver who was not Amish, tied up and shot 10 Amish schoolgirls aged 6 to 14 in their classroom last Oct. 2, killing...

PHILADELPHIA - An Amish community that lost five girls in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse shooting massacre last year has donated money to the widow of the gunman, the community said Wednesday. The Nickel Mines Accountability Committee, which was set up to handle more than $4.3 million in donations from around the world after the shootings, said it had given an unspecified "contribution" to Marie Roberts, a mother of three. Her husband, Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk truck driver who was not Amish, tied up and shot 10 Amish schoolgirls aged 6 to 14 in their classroom last Oct. 2, killing...

DEARBORN - Houssein Zorkot, a 26-year-old Dearborn resident, was arraigned Tuesday in 19th District Court on multiple felony charges, including carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent — a five-year felony. Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face when he was arrested Saturday in Hemlock Park. According to police, Zorkot was observed attempting to leave the park in a black SUV after officers had received reports of a man carrying a rifle in the area. He was placed under...

Olivieri and representatives of the market's Amish merchants met Wednesday with board president Ricardo Dunston, general manager Paul Steinke, and two leasing committee members. The meeting was held after Amish merchant leaders supported Olivieri's request for the sit-down, threatening to cancel their annual Amish festival if Olivieri were evicted.Olivieri, part of the third generation of the South Philadelphia family that claims to have invented the steak sandwich about 75 years ago

The US has raised concerns with the Amish about the discovery of Amish-made weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Richard Lawerless, departing senior Pentagon official for Asia, on Friday said Washington had flagged the issue with Hooterville, the US has become increasingly alarmed that Amish carriage-piercing weapons has been used by the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq. A senior US official recently told the ZCC[sic] that the Amish appeared to be providing the hand-made weapons (rakes, hoes, shovels, sickles, scythes and carriage whips). He said Washington had no evidence that Hooterville was complicit--except for the strong smell of chocolate...

Amish release BBC reporter Hooterville (Reuters) - Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage by the Amish , was freed early on Wednesday after a late-night deal between the ruling Amishists and the Mennonite-inspired clan group that kidnapped him in March. "It is just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience," he told the British public broadcaster from the home of local Amish leader Johannes Schwartz after his 114-day ordeal at the hands of the shadowy Army of Amos. Johnston, the only Western correspondent based full-time in the troubled Hooterville, said he sensed his captors...

June 20 (UPI) -- Five local policemen were killed in a shootout with soldiers in the capital of Russia's war-ravaged southern republic of Chechnya, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified local military official. The policemen came under fire after they stopped a car with a soldier and got into a dispute with him, with both sides calling in reinforcements, the Moscow-based news agency reported. Russia invaded Chechnya, a mainly Muslim republic in the north Caucasus, in 1999 to quell a separatist rebellion. Russia in 2003 gave Chechen security forces control over local law enforcement. Most of the new police are former...

Berlin, Ohio- A drive through the rolling hills of this Holmes County farming community 80 miles south of Cleveland delights the senses with smells of farm manure and sawmill resins mingling with limestone dust rising from the roads. Amish farmers work the fields with horse-drawn plows while their beef cattle and milk cows slowly graze nearby pastures. Women tend laundry on sagging clotheslines as their toddlers play with wooden toys. Weaving around horse-drawn buggies, a visitor might miss the sight that seems out of place here - a technology that most Americans only dream about - solar panels. Designed to...

Just happening at Ward parkway mall

About 200 Amish dairy producers met with State Sen. Dan Kapanke and former State Sen. Brian Rude last week to express their concern over a state law that they say is forcing them to choose between religion and dairy farming. The law, known as the "premise ID" law, passed the state legislature three years ago and requires all farms with animals to register with the state and a get a farm ID number. There was an "animal ID" component to the law that would have required registering individual animals, but that has been put on hold. While meeting in an...

6 Months Later, Amish Community In Lancaster County, Pa., Is Recovering (CBS News) Lancaster Co., Pa. -- Winter is grudgingly giving way to spring in Lancaster County, Pa. Soon the fields will be plowed and flowers will bloom. And a new school will open. Next Monday will mark the six-month anniversary of the Amish school shooting, and children will soon begin attending a new schoolhouse built to replace the one where five little girls were shot to death. The killer, Charlie Roberts, allowed the teacher and the boys to flee. It was the girls he wanted, but the police came...

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa - Referees halted a penalty-plagued ice hockey match that included a team of Plain adults Monday night when an Amish player allegedly pummeled a member of the officiating crew.Police in East Hempfield Township, called to the Regency Sportsrink on Ambassador Circle at 10:45 p.m., cited Emanuel Dienner, 20, with harassment after the on-ice brouhaha. Dienner, of 5498 Buena Vista Road, Gap, allegedly punched referee Keith Allen more than a half-dozen times in the midst of a goal-line scuffle with 14 seconds left in a lopsided championship game. The fight ended only when a player from the opposing...

Behind the bonnet is a girl who just wants to have fun -- and another beer, please. It's Friday night at Twister's. Tina launches the evening with a tallboy of Sparks. Customers eyeball her white bonnet and shin-grazing dress as she sips from her can of malt liquor and caffeine. She's used to the gawking. Impolite scrutiny comes with being Amish. "Everyone stares at you," she says. "It's not very fun, but I just ignore it." Besides, Tina's on a mission to get tanked. No amount of rubbernecking can stop her. The DJ approaches. Rodger Locher, a clean-cut city boy,...

When Joyce Greenfield decided to build a house in the southern Maryland town of Chaptico, she knew she wanted a single-story rambler with at least three bedrooms and fancy bathrooms. At 49 and inching toward retirement, she also needed something affordable — a modular home. She turned to a community not widely known for home-building: the Amish. One of a kind Relatives recommended an Amish man in St. Mary's County, John Hertzler. She drove out to his farm in Mechanicsville — he has no phone, being Amish — and described what she wanted. She was thrilled with the price he...

NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) - Members of the community are raising a new Amish schoolhouse a few hundred yards from the spot where a gunman shot five girls to death in October. The new building will have just one room, like the torn-down school where the massacre took place, but will be more secure, with more sophisticated locks and a location reachable only by a private drive, said John Coldiron, a township official. An Amish-owned business is building the school, but Coldiron said the entire community is pitching in. The building already had a roof and windows by Thursday, about...

NICKEL MINES, Pa. - The only Amish girl still hospitalized after a gunman's fatal attack at her one-room schoolhouse returned this week for her classmates' annual Christmas party and may finally be discharged tomorrow. Sarah Ann Stoltzfus was back for a visit at West Nickel Mines Amish School on Monday to hear her fellow students entertain their parents with about a dozen Christmas songs - a scaled-back version of their annual celebration, said Leroy Zook, the father of teacher Emma Mae Zook. He said Sarah Ann was scheduled to be released from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia tomorrow, three days before...

NY Amish Facing Child Labor Law Pressure Ed Thomas AgapePress Pro-Family Advocates Feel Constitution Favors Religious Families' Rights The executive director of a New York-based constitutional rights advocacy group says he will be talking with the senator who chairs the state's Labor Committee today during a special session of the State Legislature. At issue is the attempt to resolve a growing problem for some western New York Amish families whom state labor officials say are violating labor laws. Amish families in Lyndonville have been told the businesses they run in which their minor children, ages 14 to 17, work --...

<p>Dec. 8, 2006 — ABC News has learned a Chicago-area man has been charged with plotting a terrorist attack.</p> <p>Sources say the man is accused of planning to use firearms and explosives to attack a specific mall in Rockford, Ill. The alleged plan was to target this mall during the holiday shopping season.</p>

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - As worldwide donations for victims of the West Nickel Mines School shootings approach $4 million, three of the girls wounded in the Oct. 2 attack have returned to classes. Two other girls who survived the shootings suffered severe head wounds and are likely to have long-term disabilities. One is home while the other remains hospitalized, a spokesman for the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee said Monday. The families “are dealing with pain and loss, but I’ve heard a number of comments about the remarkable recoveries of the girls,” said Herman Bontrager, spokesman for the nine-member community group...

OXFORD, Pa. (AP) A car dealer's offer of a free shotgun with truck purchases has generated an opposition petition drive, partly because the dealership is located about 15 miles from where 10 Amish schoolgirls were shot. Country Chrysler Dodge and Jeep began the promotion a month before the Oct. 2 shooting at West Nickel Mines Amish School, said dealership president Gordon R. Atkisson Jr. It was ending, as scheduled, on Tuesday. The offer prompted Anabella Hampton, who lives nearby, to organize an Internet petition that asks for a law to ban such sales tactics. ``I was disgusted with the fact...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A gunman who killed five girls and wounded five others inside a one-room Amish schoolhouse, then killed himself, had no drugs in his system, a coroner said Friday. "The toxicology is negative across-the-board," said Lancaster Coroner Gary Kirchner, after reviewing the lab results with his office's forensic pathologist. "We expected this." The results were a dead end in the search for answers to what caused Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old father of three with no prior criminal record, to attack the girls in a school about a mile from his home in rural Lancaster County on...

We're not sure whether to laugh or cry at this story from Cleveland's WEWS-TV: Two northeast Ohio counties are being ordered by the state to try to boost the number of Amish receiving food stamps. Geauga and Holmes counties plan to start advertising campaigns to encourage Amish to enroll in the subsidy program. Holmes may use a billboard to get the message out. State officials saidt's [sic] important that the Amish know the benefit is available. But county officials question whether the effort is a waste of time and money. Amish oppose accepting government assistance. The head of the Geauga...

Claridon Township -- Tim Taylor's job calls for finding ways to distribute food stamps to Geauga County's Amish. He might as well be trying to sell them cars. The horse-and-buggy crowd philosophically opposes the support program overseen by Taylor's agency, the Geauga Department of Job & Family Services. Accepting public assistance is verboten within the Amish culture. It simply is not done. But Taylor is under orders to at least try to get them enrolled. The Ohio Department of Job & Family Services has asked Geauga and Holmes counties, which feature the state's largest Amish populations, to lift dismal food-stamp...

Marie Roberts, the widow of the killer of five Amish girls in a schoolroom massacre in rural Pennsylvania, has written to the families of his victims thanking them for their forgiveness.The hamlets of Nickel Mines, where the children lived, and Georgetown, the home of Charles Roberts, a milkman who killed himself after shooting dead the girls and injuring a further five, are slowly recovering. At the weekend, Mrs Roberts remained too distressed to give an interview but she issued a letter to her neighbours. Mrs Roberts, now a lone parent to three children, said her family was overwhelmed by the...

“Thank Heaven for Little Girls” by Ricky Acuchillador Whatever happened in America to the sweet sentiments expressed by Maurice Chevalier in the 1950’s song, “Thank Heaven for Little Girls?” Twice in the past month, demented men have entered schools with arsenals approaching the mega-weaponry carried by Rambo. Were their targets evil enemies of America? Insidious terrorists armed with AK-47s and suicide bomb vests? No, each of these idiots separated the young girls from the boys, sent the man children safely fleeing and turned their deviancy and killings on the little girls. They have to be Godless, lost souls raised in...

The Amish in Nickel Mines have been deluged with contributions. Here's how they're handling the money. Since the Oct. 2 shooting of 10 Amish schoolgirls, sympathetic people have responded with an outpouring of donations to help the community in Nickel Mines, Pa., pay hospital bills and for a new school. Since last week, three Mennonite groups with close ties to the Amish have been receiving those donations. Now the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee has been organized to administer the money. Herman Bontrager, normally the CEO of Goodville Mutual Insurance Company, is a volunteer spokesman for the committee. He talked to...

The temptation to comment on the sleaze currently oozing out of Washington in the battle for control of Congress, tainting the guilty and the innocent alike, is almost irresistible. It can wait. A much more important story unfolded last week in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, a tale of forgiveness and grace that brings into sharp focus the clash of cultures in which we are now engaged. We have heard repeatedly over the last five years that Islam is a "religion of peace hijacked by radicals." The President of the United States, in a vain attempt to appear evenhanded, has...

It's a True Crime post and there's been a rash of school shootings, some especially heinous. The vicious attack on Amish school girls this past week is a real heart-breaker. The big news is that the Amish are going to forgive. I consider the extreme pacifism of this religious sect to be a danger to them way more than a more aggressive defense would serve them. Also, Jonbenet's John Karr is free and already in trouble as I predicted. Thank you John Ramsey. An update on the Groene murders, Massachusetts' Entwistle tries a cute trick, Melinda Duckett was a nut...

They look like something from another age. Their simple clothing never changes with the times, their quiet faces rarely reveal a glimpse of the person within. And their humble demeanour tells of a life lived far outside the excesses and pressures of "modern society. "It certainly would be easy to dismiss the Amish as plain, simple -- even backward -- folk. After all, they don't communicate on BlackBerries, they don't speed down the highway in cars, they don't even have tractors or machinesto help them with work on the farm. Yet in the days following the heartbreaking schoolhouse shootings that...

<p>NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 8 -- The one-room Amish schoolhouse where five young girls were shot to death and five more were wounded last week will be torn or burned down and rebuilt elsewhere, according to a member of the close-knit community.</p>

AN AMISH girl who was expected to die after being badly wounded in last week's horrific schoolhouse shooting in the US has shown signs of making an amazing recovery. Six-year-old Rosanna King was taken off a life-support machine and sent home from hospital to die at home with her family on Wednesday. Doctors had concluded they could do nothing more for the young girl... but she defied all the worst expectations and continued to breathe on her own. She has now been taken back to hospital after showing enough strength to squeeze a family member's hand. Daniel Ash, 57, an...

Is there any place on earth that more bespeaks peace, restfulness and sanctuary from the demons of modern life than a one-room Amish schoolhouse? That fact is no doubt why so many of us felt so defiled – there is no more precise word – by news of the mass murders that took place there this week. If you're not safe in an Amish schoolhouse ... And yet, as unspeakable as those killings were, they were not the most shocking news to come out of Lancaster County this week.

Milkman was a popular figure on his roundsTHERE were no children to greet Charles Roberts the last time he collected milk from the Fisher family farm near the Pennsylvania town of Paradise. It was in the early hours of last Monday and the excited young Amish girls who often ran out to greet his arrival were inside asleep. As a tanker driver for a Lancaster County dairy, Roberts was well known to farmers as one of the few “Englishers” — the Amish term for outsiders — who were allowed to pay regular visits to the community’s old-fashioned farms. On his...

Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife's family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him.About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish."It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness...

From quilt auctions and chicken barbecues here to donations from around the world, people unite to support Amish. LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Lancaster County residents have turned their thoughts to helping and healing the shattered families of the Amish school shooting. Donations are coming in from around the world to help the victims carry the financial burdens resulting from Monday’s tragedy in Bart Township. Hundreds of people came to the Christiana Fire Company’s annual auction Friday night and early this morning, offering to pay a little extra, knowing that some of the money would be helping the Amish families. Another...

I was just reading a story about the recent Amish tragedy in Bart, Pennsylvania, and what struck me about the article was the sense of forgiveness inherent among the Amish. After such a disturbing and senseless, soul-shattering act of violence, the Amish were not lashing out at the gunmen or the gunmen's family. Though most would. They were not seeking revenge for their loss. Where many have. A great tragedy had just befallen them, which no words can convey the magnitude of, in such a small community, events and people interwoven, interlocked, where everyone knew each others names, the memories...

Amish Weddings Family is the core element in the Amish church, and choosing a mate is the most important decision in an Amishman's life. Boys and girls begin their search for a spouse when they turn sixteen. By the time a young woman turns twenty or a young man is in his early twenties, he or she is probably looking forward to the wedding day. But several definite steps must be taken by a couple before they may marry. Both must join the Amish church. They are baptized into the Amish faith and are responsible for following the Ordnung....

Under a cold, steady drizzle, the Amish drove in horse and buggy to a farmland cemetery Friday to bury the fifth of five girls shot to death by a school intruder. The death toll could grow, however, as one of the five girls wounded was reportedly near death.More than 40 buggies splashed along country roads behind a funeral-home car, two mounted state troopers and a carriage with the body of 12-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus in a hand-sawn wooden coffin.Four other girls killed during Monday's shootings, two of them sisters, were laid to rest Thursday at the same hilltop graveyard.All roads...

I'm starting to think that if Jesus Himself came back to earth, there'd be no shortage of people around who would criticize his every move. I guess that's just the way we've become. When I managed to convince the hateful, horrible members of the Westboro Baptist Church to call off their planned "protests" outside the funerals of the little Amish girls in Pennsylvania, I didn't expect to get a ticker tape parade or anything. In fact, I wasn't looking to do anything at all except figure out how to use my radio show to thwart these people from hurting the...

Just days ago, another school shooting took place, this time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, striking at the peaceful heart of a town that virtually did not know crime. A 32-year-old milk-truck driver entered a quiet Amish school house and committed unspeakable acts. It appears that 10 young girls were shot execution style and 5 are confirmed dead; the others are in critical condition. It's the third school shooting to happen nationwide within a week. The Amish lead a simple life, an unplugged life. They move with the rhythm of the sun and the seasons. But for this community, the...