A 21-year-old white gunman accused of killing nine people at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, was arrested today, said US officials, who are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
Law enforcement officials caught alleged gunman Dylann Roof, whose rampage on Wednesday came in a year that has seen months of racially charged protests across the United States over killings of black men.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters that a suspect had been taken into custody, hours after the shooting.
A man who identified himself as Roof’s uncle said he had recently been given a .45-caliber handgun as a birthday present by his father and that the 21-year-old had seemed adrift.
The victims, six females and three males, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church’s pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate, according to colleagues.
«To have an awful person come in and shoot them is inexplicable, obviously the most intolerable and unbelievable act possible,» Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters. «The only reason someone could walk into a church to shoot people praying is out of hate.»
The shooting recalled the 1963 bombing of an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The Charleston church is one of the largest and oldest black congregations in the South, its website says. It has its roots in the early 19th century, and was founded in part by a freed slave who was later executed for organizing a revolt, according to the US National Park Service.
The attack follows the April shooting of an unarmed black man in neighboring North Charleston by a white police officer. The officer has been charged with murder in that case, one of a number of deaths of unarmed black men in encounters with police that have raised racial tensions in the United States.
«I’m heartbroken,» said Shona Holmes, 28, a bystander at the aftermath of the shooting. «It’s just hurtful to think that someone would come in and shoot people in a church. If you’re not safe in church, where are you safe?»
The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies have joined in the investigation, Mullen said.
President of the Charleston NAACP, Dot Scott, told the local Post and Courier newspaper that a survivor told family members that the gunman first sat in the church before rising and opening fire. The shooter told her he would let her live so she could tell others what had happened, according to Scott.
After the shooting, a bomb threat was reported near the church, Charleston County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Eric Watson said, and people who were gathered in the area were told by police to move back.
Mullen said that the all-clear had been given after checks following the bomb threat.
A police chaplain was present at the scene of the shooting, and a helicopter with a searchlight hovered overhead as officers combed the area.
Following the attack on the church, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, canceled an appearance in Charleston that had been scheduled for Thursday morning.
«Governor Bush’s thoughts and prayers are with the individuals and families affected by this tragedy,» his campaign team said in a statement.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald