2015/06/18 – 

A lone white shooter massacred nine people during a prayer meeting at one of the South’s most venerable black churches last night.

The shooter, a young man dressed unremarkably in a sweatshirt, jeans, and Timberlands, sat inside the church in Charleston, South Carolina, for about an hour alongside his intended targets before opening fire.

At around 9 p.m. ET, after reportedly telling one member of the congregation that he was sparing her so that she could spread word of his heinous attack, he fled into the night.

The FBI suspect that man was Dylann Roof, 20, from Columbia, South Carolina. His uncle told Reuters that he recognized his nephew when he saw the surveillance photo of the wanted man. “The more I look at him, the more I’m convinced, that’s him,” said Carson Cowles.

Roof’s Facebook page shows him wearing a jacket emblazoned with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, an unrecognized state in East Africa that fought against black majority rule.

Three men and six women were slain by the gunman at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Charleston’s Calhoun Street. Police said there were three survivors.

Within hours of the crime, police said they believed they were dealing with a hate crime.

Among the dead was Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, 41, a respected community leader with a bright future in the church. His former mentor told The Daily Beast that his murder will deepen racial tensions in a community that is still splintered more than 154 years after South Carolina declared that it would secede from the Union to defend slavery.

“His loss is an incalculable loss for our church and for the state,” said Joseph Darby, the presiding elder of the 32 AME churches in the southern part of the state. “He was a caring pastor, a progressive advocate, and a very nice guy, with a wife and two daughters. A very down-to-earth, good person.”

Although distinctions are made between such killings and “terrorism,” for the sake of comparison one may note that in the Boston Marathon bombing, while many were badly injured, three people were killed by two improvised explosive devices. In Charleston, one man with what appears to have been one gun killed three times that many.

If a white supremacist proves to have been behind this attack, it will have been one of the most horrific in civil-rights history, coming 52 years after the Ku Klux Klan detonated explosives at a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls.

Darby, a former pastor of the Morris Brown AME Church a few blocks from the shooting, said police were increasing security at all of his churches but insisted that they would remain open despite fears of further attacks. “Hopefully there will be no more, but nobody is closing down church. They have tried to engage in that kind of racist terrorism since the beginning of America. It hasn’t worked yet, and it won’t work now,” he said. “People play divisive political games to stir up racists because sometimes that means they go to the polls to vote; sometimes folks that are less able, take up a gun and do something stupid.”

Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said the full might of the America’s law enforcement would do “whatever we have to do” to catch the suspect. “From the time this call came in, we have resources coming from all over the East Coast,” he said during a press conference Thursday morning. But the gunman is still at large and still considered extremely dangerous.

Joseph Riley, the mayor of Charleston, said an “unfathomable” tragedy had struck the community, and pledged that residents would respond by putting their “arms around that church.”

“Today this community is going to provide the best example of a community coming together to help those grieving because of this unbelievable event,” he said. “We’re going to heal them, love them, and support them, and that church, as long as we live.”

Racial tensions were heigtened in the city after a white North Charleston policeman was filmed shooting and killing Walter Scott, a black man, who was running away from him in April.

Reporters for Charleston’s Post and Courier captured some of the emotion in the streets. “I’m lost, I’m lost,” John Quil Lance told one of them:

“‘Granny was the heart of the family.’ He said his grandmother had worked at the church for more than 30 years. ‘She’s a Christian, hardworking; I could call my granny for anything. I don’t have anyone else like that.’ He said he didn’t know her condition. ‘I don’t even know if she’s alive now.’ He threw his hands up. ‘I don’t even know if my grandmother is alive.’ He paced up and down Ashley Avenue, and his thoughts gathered momentum. ‘What was this guy thinking? That dude shot a bunch of elderly people! Now people are going to be afraid to go to church. I don’t know what’s going to come of this. I’ll tell you this, I’m not the only one praying tonight.’ At 12:45 a.m., as word spread about the deaths, Lance fell to the ground and sobbed. ‘Somebody better get that [expletive].’”

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were among the law-enforcement agencies on the scene, although reports of a bomb threat proved to be unfounded.

Eight people were killed inside the church and another victim died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a 150-year-old landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Known as Mother Emanuel, the church is one of the oldest and largest black congregations south of Baltimore.

The detailed description of the gunman lists him as a slender white male, approximately 21 years old (he appears younger in the CCTV images), wearing a gray sweatshirt or hoodie. He was driving a small black sedan with a “distinctive” front license plate. Police have not released the make and model of the car or the precise characteristics of the plate, but are encouraging people who see a vehicle that matches the image on surveillance footage to call the FBI.

“The only reason that someone could walk into a church and shoot people praying is out of hate,” Mayor Riley said. “It is the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine, and we will bring that person to justice…. This is one hateful person.”

Source: Nico Hines

The Daily Beast