Pastor, 8 others, fatally shot at church in Charleston, SC
Images on a flier provided to media, Thursday by the Charleston Police Department show surveillance footage of a suspect wanted in connection with a shooting Wednesday at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. (Charleston Police Department via AP)
Lisa Doctor joins a prayer circle early Thursday down the street from the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday night in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Worshippers embrace following a group prayer across the street from the scene of a shooting at Emanuel AME Church, Wednesday in Charleston, S.C. A white man opened fire during a prayer meeting inside the historic black church, killing multiple people, including the pastor, in an assault that authorities described as a hate crime. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A man leans against a light pole as he visits a makeshift memorial down the street from where a white man opened fire Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside Emanuel AME Church killing several people in Charleston, S.C., Thursday. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
In this image taken from video and released by WBTV, police stand near the vehicle that was driven by Dylann Storm Roof, Thursday in Shelby, N.C. Roof, 21, was arrested Thursday in the slayings of nine people, including the pastor, at a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in downtown Charleston. (WBTV via AP) SOUTH CAROLINA AND NORTH CAROLINA TV OUT
President Barack Obama arrives in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday to speak about the church shooting in Charleston, S.C., prior to his departure to Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Noah Nicolaisen, of Charleston, S.C., kneels at a makeshift memorial down the street from where a white man opened fire Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside the Emanuel AME Church killing several people in Charleston, Thursday. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Sandra Bridges lays a greeting card at a makeshift memorial down the street from where a white man opened fire Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church killing several people in Charleston, S.C., Thursday. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Attorney General Loretta Lynch listens to members of the media’s questions on the recent church shooting in Charleston, SC., during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Thursday. Lynch said: “I can confirm that there is a suspect in custody” in church shooting. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Chaplain James St. John, center, leads senators in prayer, Thursday at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. State Sen. Clementa Pinckney was one of those killed Wednesday night in a shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
Kim Hamby, right, prays with her daughter Kayla, 4, as they lay flowers at a makeshift memorial down the street from where a white man opened fire Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church killing several people in Charleston, S.C., Thursday. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A parishioner has her bag checked by a sheriff’s deputy before entering a prayer vigil at Morris Brown AME Church for the people killed Wednesday night during a prayer meeting inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., Thursday. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
This April 2015 photo released by the Lexington County (S.C.) Detention Center shows Dylann Roof, 21. Charleston Police identified Roof as the shooter who opened fire during a prayer meeting inside the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., Wednesday night, killing several people. (Lexington County (S.C.) Detention Center via AP)
The desk of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney is draped in black cloth with a single rose and vase, Thursday at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. Pinckney was one of those killed Wednesday night in a shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A white man was arrested Thursday in the slayings of nine people, including the pastor, at a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in downtown Charleston.
Dylann Storm Roof, 21, stayed for nearly an hour inside the church Wednesday night before shooting six females and three males at a prayer meeting, Police Chief Greg Mullen said.
Roof put up no resistance after a citizen tip led police to his car Thursday morning in Shelby, North Carolina, Mullen said.
“Acts like this one have no place in our country,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who announced a Justice Department hate crime investigation. “They have no place in a civilized society.”
The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church’s pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed. Pinckney, 41, was a married father of two who was elected to the state House at 23, making him the youngest member of the House at the time.
“He never had anything bad to say about anybody, even when I thought he should,” State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford told The Associated Press. “He was always out doing work either for his parishioners or his constituents. He touched everybody.”
Roof’s childhood friend, Joey Meek, alerted the FBI after recognizing him in a surveillance camera image that was widely circulated, said Meek’s mother, Kimberly Kozny. Roof had worn the same sweatshirt while playing Xbox videogames in their home recently.
“I don’t know what was going through his head,” Kozny said. “He was a really sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had a few friends.”
Roof had been to jail: State court records show a pending felony drug case against him, and a past misdemeanor trespassing charge.
Roof displayed a Confederate flag on his license plate, Kozny said, and in a photo on his Facebook page, he wears a jacket with stitched-on flag patches from two other defeated white-ruled regimes: Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa.
The shooting evoked painful memories of other attacks. Black churches were bombed in the 1960s when they served as organizing hubs for the Civil Rights movement, and burned by arsons across the South in the 1990s. Others survived shooting sprees.
This particular congregation, which formed in 1816, has its own grim history: A founder, Denmark Vesey, was hanged after trying to organize a slave revolt in 1822, and white landowners burned the church down in revenge. Parishioners worshipped underground until after the Civil War.
This shooting “should be a warning to us all that we do have a problem in our society,” said state Rep. Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat whose district includes the church. “We need action. There’s a race problem in our country. There’s a gun problem in our country. We need to act on them quickly.”
Mullen said names of the victims would be released once families have been notified.
Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. called the shooting “an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind.”
“Of all cities, in Charleston, to have a horrible hateful person go into the church and kill people there to pray and worship with each other is something that is beyond any comprehension and is not explained,” Riley said. “We are going to put our arms around that church and that church family.”
A few bouquets of flowers tied to a police barricade formed a small but growing memorial Thursday morning a block away from the church.
“Today I feel like it’s 9-11 again,” Bob Dyer, who works in the area, said after leaving an arrangement of yellow flowers wrapped in plastic. “I’m in shock.”
Charleston residents Samuel Ward and Evangeline Simmons stood silently at the barricade with arms around each other. Simmons said she belongs to another AME congregation.
“It’s like it’s just trying to strip away part of your faith,” Simmons said. “But it just makes you stronger.”
In a statement, NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks condemned the shooting.
“There is no greater coward than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of scripture,” Brooks said.
The attack came two months after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer in neighboring North Charleston that sparked major protests and highlighted racial tensions in the area. The officer has been charged with murder, and the shooting prompted South Carolina lawmakers to push through a bill helping all police agencies in the state get body cameras. Pinckney was a sponsor of that bill.
Soon after Wednesday night’s shooting, a group of pastors huddled together praying in a circle across the street.
Community organizer Christopher Cason said he felt certain the shootings were racially motivated.
“I am very tired of people telling me that I don’t have the right to be angry,” Cason said. “I am very angry right now.”
Even before Scott’s shooting in April, Cason said he had been part of a group meeting with police and local leaders to try to shore up relations.
___
Contributors include Meg Kinnard and David Goldman in Charleston, South Carolina; Eric Tucker in Washington and Jacob Jordan in Atlanta.