NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) — Members of the Amish community where a gunman killed five girls in a one-room schoolhouse in 2006 are writing letters to reach out in sympathy to parents in Newtown, Conn.

A non-Amish farm services business owner who has promised to drive the letters to Connecticut said Tuesday he raised the idea over the weekend with the father of the teacher when the West Nickel Mines Amish School massacre occurred.

Jerry Feister of Honey Brook says he got a positive reaction, and “it just seems like there’s a connection or bond there.”

Charles Carl Roberts IV, who lived near the school, killed five girls and wounded five others before killing himself.

Feister, whose company sells and repairs dairy feeding equipment, was working nearby the day of the Nickel Mines murders.

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