The police have arrested Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old suspected to have shot dead nine people including a United States senator at the historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The police said Roof, who resided in
Lexington, South Carolina, was detained
during a traffic stop in Shelby, North
Carolina.
The gunman is reported to have sat in on a
bible study meeting for a full hour before
opening fire on the group.
The BBC reports that six women and three
men, including the church pastor, who is
also a US Senator, Clementa Pinckney, were
killed. A hate crimes’ investigation has also
been launched.
Our correspondent gathered that Pinckney,
the 42-year-old pastor of the church, was
also a Democratic state senator in South
Carolina. He recently sponsored a bill to
make body cameras mandatory for all police
officers in South Carolina in response to the
death of one Walter Scott.
According to the Sky News, a new report has
emerged that the suspect, Roof, got a gun as
his 21st birthday present from his father.
Roof has been taken into custody in Shelby,
North Carolina, law enforcement officers
said.
Meanwhile, the US President, Barack Obama
said, he and his wife had known several
members of the Emanuel AME Church,
including the pastor, Pinckney.
He called the church a “sacred place” in the
history of Charleston and spoke of his
confidence that the congregation and the
community would “rise again”.
He also raised the issue of gun ownership,
saying “communities like this have had to
endure tragedies like this too many times”.
The streets close to the church were
deserted, except for a few uniformed police
officers. A trickle of people arrived to lay
flowers for the victims.
Findings by our correspondent showed that
the Emanuel AME Church is the Oldest
African Methodist Episcopal church in the
US south. The origin stems from a group of
free blacks and slaves in 1791.
World renowned civil rights leader, Martin
Luther King, gave a speech at the church in
April 1962.
The BBC reports that the weekly bible study
meeting was under way in the church on
Calhoun Street when the shooting unfolded
at about 9pm local time on Thursday.
Charleston police chief, Gregory Mullen, said
that when police arrived at the scene eight
people were already dead in the church and
one other person died later in hospital.
“There were three survivors”, he added.
Police released images from surveillance
cameras showing a suspect they described
as white and clean shaven with a slender
build, entering the building an hour before
the shooting.
He was later seen driving away in a black
four-door saloon car.
Police and officials were quick to call it a
hate crime, and the US Department of
Justice said it would open a federal hate
crimes investigation.
Speaking after the arrest, Attorney General
Loretta Lynch said they would be “looking
at all of the facts, all of the motivations” to
determine the best way to prosecute any
case.