Bob CollinsI was driving home from work last night thinking about the shootings in South Carolina and also one of the most amazing mass murder stories I’ve ever heard.
In 2006, Charles Roberts walked into an Amish schoolhouse and shot 10 girls and killed five of them before killing himself.
That evening, the parents of the girls visited the parents of their executioner to forgive him and tell them they didn’t want the family — they were not Amish — to leave the community.
Days later, 75 members of the Amish community showed up at the killer’s funeral.
I did not think I would hear of such grace again. And I didn’t.
Until today.
At a bond hearing for Dylann Roof, the white supremacist charged with murdering 9 people in a Charleston, S.C., church this week, family members of the dead forgave him, the Charleston Post and Courier reports.
“I just want everybody to know … I forgive you,” the daughter of Ethel Lance, one of the victims, said. “I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you and have mercy on your soul.”
