Dylann Storm Roof[1] (born April 3, 1994) is an American white supremacist and mass murderer convicted for perpetrating the Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015 in the U.S. state of South Carolina.[2][3] During a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof killed nine people, all African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injured one other person. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

Three days after the shooting, a website titled The Last Rhodesian was discovered and later confirmed by officials to be owned by Roof. The website contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, along with a manifesto in which he outlined his views toward blacks, among other peoples. He also claimed in the manifesto to have developed his white supremacist views after reading about the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin and black-on-white crime.

On December 15, 2016, Roof was convicted in federal court of all 33 federal charges (including hate crimes) against him stemming from the shooting; on January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death for those crimes.[4] On March 31, 2017, Roof agreed to plead guilty in South Carolina state court to all state charges pending against him—nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony—to avoid a second death sentence. In return, he accepted a sentence of life in prison without parole.[5] On April 10, 2017, Roof was sentenced to nine consecutive sentences of life without parole after formally pleading guilty to state murder charges.[

Roof was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Franklin Bennett (called Bennett) Roof, a carpenter and a construction contractor,[9] and Amelia "Amy" Cowles, a bartender. His parents had divorced but were temporarily reconciled at the time of his birth. When Roof was five,[10] his father married Paige Mann (née Hastings) in November 1999; they divorced after ten years of marriage. Roof has two siblings, an older half sister[11] and a younger sister, Morgan Roof.[12] Bennett Roof was allegedly verbally and physically abusive toward Mann.[11][13][14][15][16] The family mostly lived in South Carolina, though from about 2005 to 2008, they temporarily moved to the Florida Keys. There is no information about Roof attending local schools there.[17]

According to a 2009 affidavit filed for Mann's divorce, Roof exhibited "obsessive compulsive behavior" as he grew up, obsessing over germs and insisting on having his hair cut in a certain style.[13] When he was in middle school, he exhibited an interest in smoking marijuana, having once been caught spending money on it.[10]

In nine years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two South Carolina counties, including White Knoll High School in Lexington, in which he repeated the ninth grade, finishing it in another school. He apparently stopped attending classes in 2010 and, according to his family, dropped out of school and spent his time alternating between playing video games and taking drugs, such as Suboxone.[10][11][13][18][19] He was on the rolls of a local Evangelical Lutheran congregation, but it was unclear if he had recently attended.[20]

Prior to the attack, Roof was living alternately in Bennett's and Cowles' homes in downtown Columbia and Hopkins, respectively,[14][21][22] but was mostly raised by his stepmother Mann.[13] For several weeks preceding the attack, Roof had also been occasionally living in the home of an old friend from middle school and the latter's mother, two brothers, and girlfriend.[15][22][23] He allegedly spent his time using drugs and getting drunk.[22] He had been working as a landscaper at the behest of his father, but quit the job prior to the shooting.[10]

His maternal uncle, Carson Cowles, said that he expressed concern about the social withdrawal of his then-nineteen-year-old nephew, because "he still didn't have a job, a driver's license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the time."[24] Cowles said he tried to mentor Roof, but was rejected and they drifted apart.[24] According to Mann, Roof cut off all contact with her after her divorce from his father. When his sister planned to be married, he did not respond to her invitation to the event.[15][16]

A former high school classmate said that despite Roof's racist comments, some of his friends in school were black

On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States. During a routine Bible study at the church, a white man about 21 years old, later identified as Roof, opened fire with a handgun, killing nine people.[33] Roof was unemployed[34] and living in largely African-American Eastover at the time of the attack.[

while Gray was in police custody.[30] He also often claimed that "blacks were taking over the world".[36] Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people, including a plot to attack the College of Charleston, but his claims were not taken seriously.

Reaction by white supremacists
Although the Council of Conservative Citizens took down its website on June 20 in the immediate wake of negative publicity,[51] its president, Earl Holt, stated that the organization was "hardly responsible" for Roof's actions.[54] The organization also issued a statement saying that Roof had some "legitimate grievances" against black people and that the group's website "accurately and honestly report[s] black-on-white violent crime".[65] Harold Covington, the founder of the Northwest Front, also condemned Roof's actions, but called the attack "a preview of coming attractions".[56]

Through analysis of his manifesto, the Southern Poverty Law Center alleged that Roof was a reader and commenter on The Daily Stormer, a white nationalist news website.[66] Its editor Andrew Anglin "repudiated Roof's crime and publicly disavowed violence, while endorsing many of Roof's views."[67] He claimed that while he would have sympathy with a white man shooting criminals, killing innocents including elderly women was "a completely insane act

Dylan's Victims

Manhunt and capture
The attack was treated as a hate crime by police, and officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were called in to assist in the investigation and manhunt.[33][69]

At 10:44 a.m., on the morning after the attack, Roof was captured in a traffic stop in Shelby, North Carolina, approximately 245 miles (394 km) from the shooting scene. Shelby had been the childhood home of Thomas Dixon, Jr., the white supremacist author whose Clansman series of books is widely regarded for inspiring the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the twentieth century.[70] A .45-caliber pistol was found in the car during the arrest, though it was not immediately clear if it was the same one used in the attack.[71][72]

Police received a tip-off from a driver, Debbie Dills, from Gastonia, North Carolina. She recognized Roof driving his car, a black Hyundai Elantra with South Carolina license plates and a three-flag "Confederate States of America" bumper decoration,[73][74] on U.S. Route 74, recalling security camera images taken at the church and distributed to the media. She later recalled, "I got closer and saw that haircut. I was nervous. I had the worst feeling. Is that him or not him?" She called her employer, who contacted local police, and then tailed the suspect's car for 35 miles (56 km) until she was certain authorities were moving in for an arrest.[75] His older half sister also reported him to the police after seeing his photo on the news.[11][76]

Roof was arrested and was interrogated by agents of the FBI. He stated that he had been traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, when he was arrested in Shelby. Police in Shelby deferred his questioning to the FBI.[77] An unidentified source said interrogations with Roof after his arrest determined he had been planning the attack for around six months, researched Emanuel AME Church, and targeted it because of its role in African-American history.[33]

Where roof is held till date

On December 7, 2016, Roof's federal trial began.[142] The jury consisted of "two black women, eight white women, one white man and one black man".[143] Two days into the trial, Roof's confession was played in court, admitting that he had killed the people at the church before chuckling.[144] On December 15, 2016, after about two hours of deliberation, the jury found Roof guilty on all 33 counts.[145]

At a court hearing on December 28, 2016, Roof reiterated that he would proceed with the sentencing phase without attorneys, although Judge Gergel repeatedly warned him that it was not in his interests to do so. At the hearing Roof said that he did not plan to call any witnesses or present any evidence at the sentencing phase in order to avoid the death penalty.[146]

On January 3, 2017, following a lengthy closed-door competency hearing, Judge Gergel denied a motion, submitted under seal by Roof's court-appointed counsel, that sought to have Roof declared incompetent.[147][148] Gergel wrote: "After fully considering all of the evidence presented, the court ruled from the bench that Defendant remains competent to stand trial and to self-represent."[147]

On January 10, 2017, the jury recommended the death penalty for Roof,[149] and on January 11, 2017 Judge Gergel sentenced Dylann Roof to death by lethal injection.[150]

Until April 19, 2017, Roof was located at the Charleston County Jail; on that day federal authorities took custody of him and took him to FTC Oklahoma City. On April 22, 2017, Roof arrived at USP Terre Haute, the location of the federal death row for men and the federal execution chamber

Andre who is roofs cell mate has continuously bullied small framed Roof , breaking his nose ribs on frequent basis

Thank u Andre

illicit:
Thank u Andre

lol yeah Andre be fucking with him big time , he appealed for a cell change but has been rejected 6times

What's even more bleeped up is there are thousands more neo-nazis roaming arround in every white predominant country, they exist even in South Africa. They teach this to there kids too, Roof must have been influenced from family.

I laughed out loud when I got to the part where the black dude beats the living day light out 'em.