NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) - The Amish school where a gunman shot 10 girls last week, killing five of them, is expected to be demolished Thursday, a fire department official said. "Tomorrow morning the school is going to be torn down," Mike Hart, a spokesman for the Bart Fire Company, said late Wednesday.
Private contractors are scheduled to start demolishing the school before dawn and will haul the debris to a landfill, a process expected to take about four hours, Hart said. "There will be no burning," he said.
The West Nickel Mines Amish School has been boarded up since Oct. 2, when gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV stormed the one-room schoolhouse, releasing 15 boys and four adults before tying up and shooting the 10 girls. Roberts, who had come armed with a shotgun, rifle, handgun and a stun gun, then killed himself.
The five wounded girls are all still believed to be hospitalized. The hospitals are no longer providing any information about the patients at the request of their families. One of the hospitals, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, announced this week it would waive the children's huge medical bills.
Hart had said previously that classes were expected to resume this week at a makeshift schoolhouse in a garage on an Amish farm in the Nickel Mines area.
Bill Kiger, executive director of Pennsylvania One Call System Inc., a Pittsburgh company that processes requests from excavators, builders and others for the location of underground utilities, said his records show the demolition will take place Friday. But Hart, who has been coordinating activities with the Amish community, still said the demolition was scheduled for Thursday.
"It's part of the closure of the whole situation," said Hart, whose fire company will help provide security. "It's going to be razed and topsoil brought in and green grass planted. It will be turned back into a green pasture."
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Associated Press writer Martha Raffaele contributed to this story.
