Crime and forgiveness
MOUNT HOPE, OHIO--Every fall, teens in the Amish community here engage in traditional harvest pranks. Some years, they steal buggies or set cornstalks on fire. "It's an annual aggravation for us," says Nathan Fritz, chief deputy of the Holmes County Sheriff's Office. But last fall, the mischief turned deadly, and the shocked community has been trying to draw lessons. One rainy September night, a dozen young people hid in a cornfield and threw tomatoes at passing cars, just as they've done for years. This time, though, a motorist fired back with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing one young man.
Now, with the motorist facing a trial set to begin March 2, the sobering shooting is again the talk of bucolic Holmes County, a terrain of rolling green hills with plain, white farmhouses and red barns nearly 70 miles south of Cleveland. This is the home of the world's largest Amish population, who drive horse-drawn buggies, attend one-room schoolhouses until eighth grade, and don't lock their doors.
"Moral fabric." In this religious county, where murders are rare, there's also a valuable lesson about forgiveness. The family of the young man who was killed has forgiven the defendant--a longtime friend who delivered ice to Amish families for their iceboxes. The other youths in the cornfield that night also wrote a signed letter, published in local newspapers, asking for forgiveness from the entire community. "We take seriously the words of Jesus about only to the extent that we forgive others will we be forgiven," says Paul Miller, executive director of the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center here. "It is beyond just religious compliance. It is part of the moral fabric of the community."
It was nearly 11:30 p.m. on September 1 when a silver Cadillac was pelted with tomatoes. The driver threatened to shoot, then drove north on the dark, two-lane country road, turned around, and was struck again. The man returned 25 minutes later and fired into the cornfield. Steven Keim, 23, was hit in the heart and pronounced dead an hour later. Hardworking Keim had started his own roofing company and helped on the family's 118-acre farm. He was raised Amish, but his family left the order some years ago and became Mennonites, who share similar beliefs with the Amish but permit modern conveniences, such as electricity and driving.
The next day, Marion Weaver, 58, suffered a nearly fatal heart attack. Upon his release from the hospital, Holmes County sheriff's deputies charged him with murder and involuntary manslaughter after seizing his car and several shotguns from his home. Weaver, it turns out, had been friends with Keim's father, Reuben, and they had hunted and fished together. Weaver, who went to a Mennonite college, lived alone in a ranch-style home with peeling red paint and rusted junkers in the yard. He has a reputation as a hothead with an arrest record for assault, criminal damaging, and trespassing. Unlike so many criminal cases elsewhere, however, the victim's family forgave the accused shooter. "I had forgiven him before I knew who it was," Gladys Keim told U.S. News. "If you are filled with God's love, that helps make it easier to forgive."
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