Ohio Amish Teens Shot, Expected to Recover

If you hadn’t heard, last weekend (two Saturdays ago) two Amish teenagers were shot in a bizarre incident in Ashtabula County, Ohio.

The teens were picking up stereo equipment from a local English home where it was stored, as they had done numerous times before, when they were fired upon by the property owners.

The teens were driven by an English person who was interviewed by Fox 8 of Cleveland.

From the story:

The van driver, Jade Fulop, said she is still in shock.

Fulop said the van was loaded with several Amish teens.

“It was a nightmare come true,” Fulop said Tuesday. “It’s been horrible, the after effects, horrible. It was horrible then; it hasn’t changed.”

Fulop said she drove the teens, like she has done several dozen times before, to a home off of Huntley Road.

She said the teenagers stored stereo equipment in a barn located on the property.

Sheriff officials said the property owners fired shots at the van, which they thought was trespassing on their property.

“First couple shots were far away, and the Amish yelled out they were there to get the player, and after that it was open fire,” Fulop said.

She added the two were chasing the van.

“They shot up the back end of the van. My van is covered in blood,” Fulop said.

The Jamesons told officers they believed the van was trespassing and began firing multiple rounds from a handgun and shotgun, striking the van and seriously wounding the two teens.

The two victims are in the ICU unit at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.

The victims are a 17-year-old female and an 18-year old male.  They are expected to recover. Photos were released Friday of the driver’s bullet-riddled van.

This is the second unusual shooting of Amish teens in Ohio in the past two years. A teenage girl was shot and killed in Holmes County in what turned out to be an unintentional shooting in late 2011.

The property owners, who have been charged with felonious assault, claimed the teens were trespassing. As the sheriff notes in the report, Ohio gun owners have a right to protect themselves, but not to use deadly force to protect property.

Why did the men open fire? Was their judgment impaired in some way? It is hard to fathom why they would shoot, and continue shooting, even after the Amish called out and identified themselves.

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41 Comments

  1. Andrea green

    How shocking, will pray these younge people will be ok and the poor van driver must have been totally shaken up as they all must be. The Amish may have to think about who they store there belongings with !!
    This must be a freak act for the Amish i may think. Very worrying for there parents and the community. 🙁 will keep them in pray.

    1. Monica

      I could not agree with you more, Andrea and Sharyn

  2. Outrageous!

    What kind of country are we living in? Did the property owners post “No Trespassing” signs? (Maybe some kind of illegal activity was going on at that place that they didn’t want strangers to know about.) Who allowed the teens to store the equipment on the property in the first place?

    1. Karen W.

      I couldn’t agree more with you forsythia, this is a VERY sad commentary on our “society” & not just because these were Amish youngsters, but because we see & hear about these stupid type of things more & more. I also think there must have been some “nefarious” activity going on for them to shoot those youngsters, especially if the Amish identified themselves. I truly hope & pray those youngsters recover & will also pray for their families & for the van driver as well. May God have mercy on the two shooters as well.

    2. It sounds like they had an arrangement to keep the equipment on the property. In another account I read the shooters claimed that the teens usually called before coming over but did not this time (not a reason to open fire of course).

  3. Slightly-Handled-Order-Man

    Oh my

    Yes, we should pray for these Amish teens and for their swift recovery. We should also pray for the, albeit well meaning, shooters and hope that “Amish grace” as it might be called, comes into play, and allows the community to forgive them.

    My first reaction honestly, upon reading the article was “That is so the action of a country bumpkin, redneck or hillbilly stereotype that it can’t be real – someone shooting at a van because it’s on their property, there is other avenues to pursue before a person should go shooting van.”

  4. New York State of Mind

    Part of the interview with the van driver was on our Channel 13 News in Rochester, NY. That is terrible. I agree with forsythia – maybe some kind of illegal activity was going on and they just happen to pull the van up at the wrong time, but still it doesn’t give them the right to shot anyone. They should have known the van if it had been there numerous times before. What were the Amish children using the stereo equipment for anyway? Still they should not have had this happen. They, their families and the van driver are in my prayers.

  5. Dali Castillo

    Guns: Don't EVEN get me started

    The right to protect yourself? The teens identified themselves! Makes no sense! I’ve seen guns do more damage than good, yet more and more people keep making excuses for them. I also see more and more guns in the wrong hands, even hands that acquired them legally and rhave them registered.. Sadly, this is a situation that never should have happened. My prayers go out for the injured and the other innocents.

  6. Helen Tiernan

    Shocking but it’s becoming so commonplace isn’t it? And to be shot even after identifying yourself?
    I guess those Amish teens were in Rumspringa? Otherwise they wouldn’t have had the stereo equipment. Just a guess there. In any case, it’s not a reason to be shot at. You can see why the Amish want to live separate lives when incidences such as this occur.
    I agree with the previous comments about illegal activity. It certainly looks suspicious, doesn’t it?
    We, regular followers of this page, know that there will be forgiveness from the Amish families/communities regardless of the outcome. That’s just the Amish way.
    It’s just so very sad. I hope those youngsters make a full recovery.

    1. I read “recovery” but did not see the word full, maybe that says something. One was hit in the eye area, another in the neck.

      I don’t know how many details will emerge here. This is the Geauga County settlement where youth have had a more wild reputation. It was probably stereo equipment for a party of some sort. That’s not why they were shot of course, but it looks like they were associating with some dodgy people in order to store the stereo.

  7. Debbie H

    Rumspringa

    I also believe the teens were probably in rumspringa. If I was an Amish elder I would have to rethink allowing runspringa. I know their reasoning behind it, but I still think it has gotten to the point where it is all about illegal and violent behavior. What Christian family would condone their youth “running wild” and trying drugs, alcohol and violent behavior (especially the underage drinking)before settling down to a Christian life?

    1. While some Amish churches are more stringent about the activities that go on in their youth, I don’t think it’s as much a top down decision to allow youth to do these things, but an issue on the family level. You have to give people freedom when they are coming of age and becoming adults and let them make their own decisions. Hopefully they choose wisely, good role models of course being important.

      Also larger communities are just going to have an element of wilder youth. Some may move to smaller communities because of it. Worry over whether children are making the right decisions has no doubt kept many parents awake at night, Amish, English, whoever.

  8. SharonR

    Ohio Amish Teens Shot

    Agree with bloggers — Guns are really bringing turmoil to this society, these days. They are getting into the wrong hands, and mis-used way too much! Why resort to violence, in the first place? And they identified themselves and still got shot?!!!! Yeh, something else was going on, there….. Sure hope the Amish teens will be Ok – my prayers go out to them and their families — not all of us Englishers are this way!! Sure hope they know this! I hope the shooters get maximum sentences!! Tragic!!
    SharonR

  9. Bob Rosier (Bob the Quaker)

    It is such a shame that our country is becoming so violent. In Quaker thinking, there is part of God in every person, and as a pacifist, I personally would never own an instrument designed to take a human life.

    The fact is that compared to other industrial nations, the United Stated has the highest per capita rate of fatalities due to firearm violence than any nation on earth.

    Doesn’t it seem a little strange to get upset when Iraqis kill a few thousand Americans, but accept having about 100,000 Americans shot by Americans each year? About one third are fatalities. The war is not in foreign countries; it is here at home. Although the number of hate groups has increased in recent years, I understand there is a recent slow trend back toward a more peaceful country. Let’s hope so. With the 911 system, and with practically everyone with a cell phone, let the trained police do their job. Besides the expertise, they also have sensibility and accountability. Taking the law into your own hands has not worked.

    1. Matt from CT

      >accept having about 100,000 Americans shot by Americans each year?

      Of the 30,000 deaths from firearms in the U.S. each year, two-thirds are suicide.

      There is no reason to believe that even draconian gun control would affect that portion of the deaths meaningfully. The U.S. and U.K. have the same rates of suicide; in the U.K. far crueller ways like self-strangulation predominate.

      Of the third of deaths that are homicides, over half are committed by blacks on blacks. Blacks commit murders at a rate 12 times higher than whites; Hispanics at a rate 4 times higher than whites. And that is not a racial thing, or even a social/class issue — it is a proxy for gang violence in competition over drug territory.

      Once you back out violence fueled entirely by our failed war on drugs, we’re left with a gun violence rate that is on par with those notorious hotbeds of violence, Canada and Finland.

      Go ahead, blame the inanimate objects as much as you like.

      Until you address much more fundamental problems in our society ranging from mental health to drug control policies, you’re not going to reduce violence and death.

  10. Hard to say what happened here, I am sure there are details to this story we do not know. Seems highly odd that they would shoot like that without some extenuating factors.

    Selling books I went down countless country lanes (English homes numbering in the hundreds, even thousands) in different places in rural America, and different socioeconomic spheres, where I did not know the owner before I visited.

    I was never shot at nor had so much as a gun mentioned to me, though I’m sure many of the homes I visited contained guns. The vast majority were friendly and no one was violent…I was never accused of “trespassing” for driving down someone’s drive (seems like something out of a bad movie).

    1. OldKat

      I had one pulled on me

      Erik,

      When I was selling for Southwestern (1974) in central Florida I called almost exclusively on rural homes. One day I drove down a farm, actually a ranch, road to a very isolated home with a white picket fence around it. As I opened the gate a boy about 12 or 13 years old stepped out onto the porch. I greeted him with my standard “Hi, can I speak to your mom or dad?”

      He said something that I did not understand, so I asked him again.
      This time he clearly said “Sir, you better leave …now!” and produced a double barreled shotgun which he leveled at my face. I left.

      I was pretty shaken by this event, but after I calmed down I resumed my calls and drove down to a house on the adjoining property. I told the man that lived there what had happened and he told me that a couple of years before a stranger drove onto his neighbor’s property and attempted to abduct that same boy. He was naturally terrified of strangers ever since.

      I’d say he had a valid concern and the brandishing of the double barrel shotgun was understandable under the circumstances. That said, that is a long way from firing at a vehicle that is “trespassing” on your property.

      Saw an interesting statistic on TV last night. If you subtract the gun violence that takes place in Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. and one other city which I can’t recall, the US goes from the nation with the HIGHEST number of gun violence incidents to the fourth LOWEST. So it sounds like hillbilly, redneck, rural types aren’t the problem, because I don’t think many of them live in cities, particularly THOSE cities.

      Have no idea if that statistic is accurate or not and I didn’t hear or see where they gathered their statistics from. It is interesting to note that the three I listed are among the cities with the strictest gun control laws in the nation. Like I said, I can’t recall what the fourth city was, but my guess would be LA or New Orleans. Not sure of the gun control laws in either of them.

      1. I think I remember you sharing this story Oldkat. Certainly strange things can and will happen if you visit enough places. I would probably label this a “freak occurence” rather than the way of things. I am also struck by a 12 or 13 year old having access to the gun, but different times and different places. I also wonder if they ever got visits from package delivery, feed people, etc, and what the greeting strategy was then.

        Maybe people are faster to pull guns in some rural communities, and I just luckily happened to avoid those areas? States where I sold in English communities included Michigan, Iowa, Missouri twice, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin.

  11. Sharyn

    I know the driver personally , she is still shook up over it . I hear the Amish should be coming home from the hospital soon as well . Yes Erik you heard correctly the female was injured in the eye the male in the neck . It’s sad Jade has taken these Amish to that property many times since last October , so they shot people they knew . 🙁

    1. Dali Castillo

      Sharyn, thanks for the update on the condition of the teens. It just seems that all the speculation regarding Rumspringa, why do they have the speakers, etc. is getting away from the real issue: guns. Englisch, Amish, whatever. The issue is guns in the wrong hands and the innocent continue to be the victims. Very sad.

    2. Sharyn

      They are home from hospital the girl lost sight in her eye of course but is handling it well the young man is still having trouble talking but is adjusting as well .

      1. SharonR

        Ohio Amish Teens Shot

        Thanks for the update, Sharyn. They will have many months of healing, I’m sure. My heart goes out to them and their families, with prayers.
        SharonR

    3. SharonR

      Ohio Amish teens shot

      As the 2 teens recover from this scary, un-necessary, evil wrongdoing, I also pray for the driver, as well. She is very brave and she is providing a great service to the Amish community. I hope she can recover and continue to help the Amish, with their transportation needs.
      SharonR

  12. Bob Rosier (Bob the Quaker)

    I do like your positive attitude Erik, and I try to do the same. Maybe since neither of us have been confronted, perhaps things are not as bad as they seem. The news media seem to play up the violence.

    We need to think of our country, and for that matter our world, as one big family.

    1. My main point is that this incident is an outlier, for someone just driving down somebody’s lane (especially if there is a pre-existing relationship/arrangement as these people apparently had).

      I had plenty of opportunities to experience the same, going down the back country lanes of complete strangers in areas just like the one where this happened. But it’s never anything I feared, because it’s just not something that happens in normal circumstances(i.e., if you’re not visiting places you clearly shouldn’t, say by jumping fences and actually intruding somewhere). This is just a rural Ohio township in an Amish area, not the slums of Sao Paulo.

      Also, two men were involved in the shooting, which makes it less likely there was mental illness involved. It leads me to believe there was either some sort of chemical inducement as Matt suggests below, or perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye.

  13. Matt from CT

    I’d bet my last dollar this was an “Alcohol induced incident.”

  14. Bob Rosier (Bob the Quaker)

    I can relate to the slums of Sao Paulo. My wife and I were in the Peace Corp and our assignment….you guessed it…Sao Paulo

  15. Update

    The van driver, Jade Fulop, has left comments giving more details on the shooters and victims on the Amish America Facebook page:

    https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=552150728178711&id=122176297842825

    1. SharonR

      Amish teens shot - Facebook entry by Van driver

      Any possibility we can get her info, onto this blog? I don’t “do Facebook”. Unless she has put it on a “public” area, so anyone can read it.
      SharonR

      1. It’s on the Amish America page which is public. You should be able to read it. I am logged out of Facebook right now and still able to access it.

  16. SharonR

    Amish Teens - Entry on Facebook - by van driver

    Part 2 — I was able to copy/paste the link into my browser, and it opened right up — no need to “join” Facebook. Thanks, Erik, etc.
    SharonR

  17. Ed

    I can’t help make comparisons to the Trayvon Martin case that has been in the media recently. I realize the Martin case involved a physical altercation, something that did not happen with the Amish youth. But both cases a shooter choose to assume the worst and eagerly brought on a confrontation when in fact nothing was amiss and no response was needed.

    There’s no easy answer to prevent these acts. But I am very uneasy about so-called “Stand your ground” laws. Such laws seem to make it all too easy for the aggressor to make a post-mortem justification of any shooting.

  18. GreyCatz

    The fact that the victims were Amish, a group of people legendary for their pacifist tenets (even to the point of refusing military service), lends this episode with a cruel irony indeed.

    Being an outsider in every sense of the word (I’m Danish and ‘mainstream Christian’), this is not the time or the place for me to review US politics, but I do have a few thoughts:

    Shootings in Europe happen all the time, but nine out of ten times it’s criminals killing other criminals. This means that if I manage to steer clear of criminals, I can pretty much expect to go through life without ever seeing an actual gun. To most Europeans that is (still) considered a hall-mark of a peaceful, civilized society.

    Occasionally, a distraught husband will go crazy and kill his family (it happens in Denmark), or a desperate school-kid will shoot his school-yard tormentors (it happens in Germany and France). Such episodes are considered wild aberrations by everyone and the whole of society combines to prevent future episodes. It’s not an issue open to debate.

    Gun-ownership is not a right in any European country; you have to convince the police that you need it, and amazingly it’s not that difficult (e.g. farmers, foresters and high-profile individuals usually have gun licences). This means that there are lots of guns in Europe but the vast majority are held by criminals – people you are unlikely to consort with in the first place.

    This most recent episode, involving Amish teenagers, is difficult for me to absorb on so many levels, but chiefly because generally speaking, and allowing for the usual exceptions to the rule, in Europe regular people simply don’t shoot other regular people.

    Let me just repeat that I mean no offense to any Americans let alone disrespect to the Amish. Europeans aren’t necessarily better people (just consider the 2011 massacre in Norway), but this is an aspect of US society that I suspect I shall always struggle to understand.

    1. Thanks GreyCatz for the input. For whatever it’s worth, when I’m in Poland, to the extent that I worry about crime, I tend to be more worried about knifings or assault from soccer hooligans, than I do gun crime (I generally spend time in the two largest cities in the country, and not in the patently bad parts of them, generally in the center and in what we could call middle-class neighborhoods).

      But when I’m in the states, I don’t really worry about gun crime or other violent crime much at all. I guess because my orbits don’t cross those who might be inclined to do violence. Maybe if my occupation, or social circles, were different, I’d report a different experience.

      1. GreyCatz

        Amish Recovery.

        Hello, Erik:

        I’m very glad to hear that you personally don’t worry too much about gun violence in the US. Sometimes I have to remind myself that these episodes, despite the heavy media coverage, must be exceptions, too; the vast majority of Americans will go through life quite peacefully and undramatically, as well they should.

        And I’m especially pleased to hear that the Amish teenagers have returned home. Despite the physical and mental trauma sustained, at least they survived, unlike that poor girl who died in that ‘freak bullet’ accident some time ago.

        You’re certainly right about European soccer violence; it’s the main reason I never attend a high-profile soccer match, even in Denmark. Although the violence often is “low-tech” barroom-style fistfighting, some spectators seem to view any match as an excuse to shed all vestiges of civilized conduct.

  19. Update on Amish victims (#2)

    To update this case a bit, the English van driver Jade Fulop, seen in the original video, left a message on the Amish America Facebook page about a week ago on the two victims:

    they are doin great:) they returned home within a wk after it happen and both were able to return to work this past wk. the girl is blind in her left eye. everyone that was on the van that horrible night is still having issues.

    https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=557208411006276&id=122176297842825

  20. Bob the Quaker

    I have traveled all over Europe (several times to Poland Erik) & in general you do have to be careful about pick pockets, but seldom do you worry about someone hurting you. You are more likely to get shot in this country than anywhere else, & that is sad.

    1. I was attacked once by a soccer hooligan (middle of the day, during a passing championship celebration parade) and regularly observe the almost absurdly heavy police presence during matches (before I knew better, I even attended one match, as I like the sport…won’t do that again, though I hear they are more “family-friendly” now), so that is my reference point.

      I don’t think we experience anything to the same degree of sports hooliganism as Europe does, though I am sure it varies among countries (England has much improved since the 1980s for instance). My feeling, based on my experience, is that I am more concerned about being hurt in some variation of street crime in Europe than I am in the US (at least in Poland), but not about being shot.

      I’ll also say that our views, my own included, tend to be colored by personal experience, and my observations as I suggested above are not worth a whole lot beyond that, compared to the statistics and studies which give a clearer picture.

      1. GreyCatz

        US sports fans v. European hooligans.

        Hello, Erik:

        I’m very sorry to hear about the attack on you – it must have been a dreadful experience.

        Sadly, you’re right in your observations on ‘soccer culture’ in Europe; since the late 1980s, it’s been all about riot police trying to rein in out-of-control hooligans, and it’s virtually everywhere on the globe.

        In the early 1990s, I read a book by Bill Buford (‘Among the Thugs’) which was quite a revelation. Buford, an American journalist, went undercover among British hooligans for several years and uncovered a massive and intricate network involving right-wing extremists, members of law enforcement and well-known business-people. It may seem to have improved today but statistics indicate that the hooligans have successfully embraced the new technologies of cell phones and online networks.

        Echoing your own observations, Buford also wrote about the huge behavioural difference between US and European sports-fans: Americans seem to focus just as much (if not more) on the social aspect of any sports game, whereas in Europe soccer fans in particular tend to regress into some kind of neolithic, tribalistic mindset that inevitably involves violence.

        This is the main reason I’m very cautious when commenting on US gun-policy; like I said earlier, Europeans aren’t necessarily better people, and the spectre of hooliganism continues to cast a dark shadow over almost every large-scale sports event.

        1. I should say it was a single punch, and the fact it came out-of-the-blue left more of an impression than any pain it caused. Someone was celebrating his team’s success, decided he wanted my cell phone, but did not get it. In retrospect seeing how many of his comrades were along it probably would have been wiser to just let it go.

          I also don’t want to give the impression that people are attacked left and right, as that’s not the case either…It’s just something I am compelled to be conscious of when I’m in that environment.

          My brother had Among the Thugs, and I know I read at least part of it years ago. On the positive it sounds like England’s hooligan issue is not comparable to what it once was.