Following a deadly shooting at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday evening, in which nine people were killed, police conducted a massive manhunt and on Thursday morning apprehended a suspect named as Dylann Roof (21) in the neighbouring state of North Carolina.
Six women and three men were killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston Roof, South Carolina police confirmed, and said that the shooting would be investigated as a hate crime.
Among the dead is pastor and State Senator Clementa Pinckney (41), a married father of two who was first elected when he was 23 years old.
Roof, who was arrested during a traffic stop in the town of Shelby and was said to have a criminal record of felonies including a drug case and one misdemeanour, spent nearly an hour with his would-be victims praying inside the church before shooting them dead, going by surveillance footage showing his movements.
At a media conference on Thursday Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen said, “There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is a hate crime,” even as he confirmed that his department was working with local, state and federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The state’s Indian-American Governor Nikki Haley issued a statement saying “We do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” prompting some in the media to ask how it could be anything but obvious that racism was the motivation for the shooting.
History behind the structure
| >> | The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal was founded in 1816 by African-American former members who left the church because of a dispute over the burial grounds. Its roots stem from a group of free blacks and slaves in 1791. |
| >> | Denmark Vesey, one of the founders, was a leader of a failed slave revolt in 1822. |
| >> | The church was rebuilt in 1891, replacing the structure damaged in the 1886 earthquake. |
Roof’s Facebook profile photo shows him in a dark jacket with the emblems of two flags from African countries when they were ruled by Europeans, including one is from apartheid-era South Africa and the other is from the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
Some media quoted law enforcement officials saying that surveillance images suggested that the assailant may have been wearing a wig and a fake nose, and may even have dyed part of his skin.
The church that the killer struck was widely known as “Mother Emanuel,” and was built in 1891, making it the oldest AME church in the South, and a stronghold for the early anti-slavery leaders of in the pre-civil-rights movement era.
