Gunman kills nine after worshipping in African-American Church

| credits: CNN

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.

PUNCH.