CHARLESTON: Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white man with an unsettled personal life and a recent history of anti-black views was arrested over the charge of killing nine people during a prayer at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The mass murder of nine people who gathered Wednesday night for Bible study at a landmark black church has shaken a city whose history from slavery to the Civil War to the present is inseparable from the nation’s anguished struggle with race.
According to the reports in US media, authorities were shocked not only by the killings but that the violence occurred in a house of worship.
The victims of the shooting included the church’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, 41, a Democratic member of the state Senate. Earlier in the day Pickney reportedly campaigned with Hillary Clinton as she continues her presidential campaign tour in Charleston.
“People in prayer Wednesday evening. A ritual, a coming together, praying, worshiping God. An awful person to come in and shoot them is inexplicable,” said Charleston Mayor Joe Riley.
