Dylann Roof, 21, Killer Of Nine, Taken Into Police Custody In North Carolina
| 18 June, 2015 | Posted by Stacey under News |
via CNN:
• Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Roof has been taken into custody in Shelby, North Carolina, law enforcement officers said.• Roof, 21, of Lexington, South Carolina, is the suspect in Wednesday’s deadly shooting at the Emanuel AME Church, Charleston police said Thursday.
• Witnesses say the gunman stood up and said he was there “to shoot black people,” a law enforcement official said. The shooter is also thought to have used a handgun, according to the official.
They got him.
The man suspected of killing nine people Wednesday night at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, was arrested Thursday morning about 245 miles (395 kilometers) away in Shelby, North Carolina, law enforcement authorities said.
Dylann Roof, 21, of Lexington, South Carolina, was taken into custody without incident about 11:15 a.m. during a traffic stop, Charleston police Chief Greg Mullen said Thursday morning. He said local police were acting on a BOLO (be-on-the-lookout) notice that included a vehicle description, the license tag and the suspect’s name.
Roof was armed with a gun when he was arrested, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. It’s not clear if it’s the same firearm he allegedly used in the shooting.
A senior law enforcement source told CNN the suspect’s father had recently bought him a .45-caliber gun for his 21st birthday.
President Barack Obama mourned the violence and the victims, saying, “Any death of this sort is a tragedy. Any shooting involving multiple victims is a tragedy. There is something particularly heartbreaking about death happening in a place in which we seek solace, we seek peace.”
The slayings took place inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, near the heart of Charleston’s tourist district. The man spent an hour in a prayer meeting before he opened fire, Mullen said Thursday morning.
A law enforcement official says witnesses told them the gunman stood up and said he was there “to shoot black people.”
Police were searching for information about Roof.
He was charged earlier this year on a trespassing charge in Lexington County, South Carolina. According to an arrest warrant, Roof was approached by police after a store complained about him.
After a search, police found an unlabeled pill bottle with “multiple orange in color strips” believed to be suboxone, a drug used to relieve painkiller addiction. Roof told police that a friend gave him the drugs.
Authorities are investigating whether Roof (whose last name is rhymes with “cough”) had links to hate groups.
A picture of him on social media showed him wearing a jacket with what appear to be the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that was ruled by a white minority until it became independent in 1980 and changed its name to Zimbabwe.
Six females and three males were killed in the church, Mullen said. Among the victims was the church’s politically active pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.
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