On this date, June
17, 2015, Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. I will post
information about the suspected perpetrator, Dylann Roof from Wikipedia.
Dylann Roof
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Born
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Dylann Storm Roof
April 3, 1994 Columbia, South Carolina, United States |
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Occupation
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Former landscaper
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Known for
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Suspect in Charleston church shooting
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Criminal
charge
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Nine counts of murder
Three counts of attempted murder Possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime |
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Criminal
status
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In jail and awaiting trial
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Parent(s)
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Franklin Bennett (father)
Amelia Cowles (mother) Paige Mann (stepmother) |
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Dylann Storm Roof (born April 3, 1994) is an American
suspected of perpetrating the June 17, 2015 Charleston church shooting. During
a prayer service at Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof is alleged to have killed
nine African Americans,
including senior pastor
and state senator
Clementa C.
Pinckney, and injured one other person. After several people
identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that
ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby,
North Carolina. He later confessed that he
committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.
Three
days after the shooting, a website titled The Last Rhodesian was
discovered and later confirmed by officials to be owned by Roof. The website
contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, along with a manifesto in which
he outlined his views towards blacks, among other peoples. He also
claimed in the manifesto to have developed his white supremacist views
following research on the 2012 shooting of
Trayvon Martin and "black-on-white
crime".
Roof
has been charged with nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder,
and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He also faces
federal hate crime charges, for which he faces the death
penalty. His trial in state court will start on January 17, 2017.
1
Personal background
Dylann
Roof was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Franklin
Bennett (called Bennett) Roof, a carpenter, and Amelia "Amy" Cowles,
a bartender. Both were divorced but temporarily reconciled at the time of his
birth. When Roof was five, his father married Paige Mann (née Hastings) in
November 1999, but they divorced after ten years of marriage. Bennett Roof was
allegedly verbally and physically abusive towards Mann. The family mostly lived
in South Carolina, though from about 2005 to 2008, they temporarily moved to
the Florida
Keys. There is no information about Roof attending local schools there.
According
to a 2009 affidavit
filed for Mann's divorce, Roof exhibited signs of obsessive–compulsive disorder as he
grew up, obsessing over germs and insisting on having his hair cut in a certain
style. When he was in middle school, he exhibited an interest in smoking marijuana,
having once been caught spending money on it.
In
nine years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two South Carolina
counties, including White Knoll High School in Lexington, in which he repeated the ninth
grade, finishing it in another school. He apparently stopped attending classes
in 2010 and, according to his family, dropped out of school and spent his time
alternating between playing video games and taking drugs, such as Suboxone. He
was on the rolls of a local Lutheran congregation.
Prior
to the attack, Roof was living alternately in Bennett's and Cowles' homes in
downtown Columbia and Hopkins, respectively, but was mostly
raised by his stepmother Mann. In the past several weeks preceding the attack,
Roof had also been occasionally living in the home of an old friend from middle
school and the latter's mother, two brothers, and girlfriend. He allegedly
spent his time using drugs and getting drunk. He had been working as a
landscaper at the behest of his father, but quit the job prior to the shooting.
His
maternal uncle, Carson Cowles, said that he expressed concern about the social
withdrawal of his then-nineteen-year-old nephew, because "he still
didn't have a job, a driver's
license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the
time." Cowles said he tried to mentor Roof, but was rejected and they
drifted apart. According to Mann, Roof cut off all contact with her after her
divorce from his father. When his sister planned to be married, he did not
respond to her invitation to the event.
A
former high school classmate said that despite Roof's racist comments, some of
his friends in school were black.
1.1
Earlier contacts with police
Roof
had a prior police record consisting of two arrests, both made in the months
preceding the attack. On March 2, 2015, he was questioned about a February 28
incident at the Columbiana Centre in Columbia, in which he entered the mall
wearing all-black clothing and asked employees unsettling questions. During the
questioning, authorities found a bottle of what was later admitted to be Suboxone,
a narcotic used either for treating opiate addictions or as a recreational
drug; Roof was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of drug possession. He was
subsequently banned from the Columbiana Centre for a year. After he was
arrested again on April 26 for trespassing on the mall grounds, the ban was
extended for three additional years.
According
to James
Comey, Roof's March arrest was written as a felony, which would have
required an inquiry into the charge during a background check examination.
However, it was legally a misdemeanor charge and was incorrectly written as a
felony at first due to a data entry error made by a jail clerk. Despite this,
Roof would not have been able to legally purchase firearms under a law that
barred "unlawful user[s] of or addicted to any controlled substance"
from owning firearms.
On
March 13, 2015, Roof was investigated for loitering in his parked car near a
park in downtown Columbia. He had been recognized by an off-duty police officer
who investigated his March 2 questioning; the officer then called a colleague
to investigate. A police officer conducted a search of his vehicle and found a
forearm grip for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and six unloaded magazines, all capable of holding 40 rounds.
When asked about it, Roof informed the officer that he wanted to purchase an
AR-15, but did not have enough money to do so. He was not charged, as it was
not illegal in South Carolina to possess a firearm grip.
2
Charleston church shooting
Main
article: Charleston church shooting
On
the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United
States. During a routine Bible study at the church, a white man
about 21 years old, later identified as Roof, opened fire with a handgun,
killing nine people. Roof was unemployed and living in largely African-American
Eastover at the time of the attack.
2.1
Suspected motivation
According
to a childhood friend, Roof went on a rant about the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the 2015 Baltimore protests that were sparked
by the death of Freddie Gray while Gray was in
police custody. He also often claimed that "blacks were taking over the
world". Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill
people, including a plot to attack the College of Charleston, but his claims were
not taken seriously.
One
image from his Facebook
page showed him wearing a jacket decorated with two obsolete flags used as
emblems among American white supremacist movements, those of Rhodesia
(present-day Zimbabwe)
and apartheid-era
South
Africa. Another online photo showed Roof sitting on the hood of his car
with an ornamental license plate with a Confederate flag on it.
According to his roommate, Roof expressed his support of racial segregation in the
United States and had intended to start a civil war.
One
of the friends who briefly hid Roof's gun away from him said, "I don't think the church was his primary target because
he told us he was going for the school. But I think he couldn't get into the
school because of the security ... so I think he just settled for the church."
An African-American friend of his said that he never witnessed Roof expressing
any racial prejudice, but also said that a week before the shooting, Roof had
confided in him that he would commit a shooting at the college.
2.1.1
Website and manifesto
On
June 20, a website that had been registered to a "Dylann Roof" on
February 9, 2015, lastrhodesian.com was discovered. Though the identity
of the domain's owner was intentionally masked the day after it was registered,
law enforcement officials confirmed Roof as the owner. The site included a
cache of photos of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag,
as well as with the widely-recognized Nazi code numbers 88 (an abbreviation for the salute "Heil
Hitler!") and 1488,
written in sand. Roof was also seen spitting on and burning an American flag.
While some photographs seemed to show Roof at home in his room, others were
taken on an apparent tour of slavery-related North and South Carolina
historical sites, including Sullivan's Island, the largest
slave disembarkation port in North America, four former plantations, two
cemeteries (one for white Confederate soldiers, the other for slaves), and the
Museum and Library of Confederate History in Greenville. Roof is believed to have
taken self-portraits using a timer, and his visits were not remembered by staff
members working at the sites.
The
website also contained an unsigned, 2,444-word manifesto apparently authored by
Roof, in which he outlined his opinions, all methodically broken into the
following sections: "Blacks", "Jews",
"Hispanics", "East Asians", "Patriotism", and
"An Explanation":
I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.
The
manifesto states that its author was "truly awakened" by coverage of
the shooting of Trayvon Martin:
I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words "black on White crime" into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?
The
manifesto also mentioned as another source of influence the Northwest Front, a Seattle-based
white supremacist organization infamous for its participation in the 1979 Greensboro massacre.
According
to web server logs, Roof's website was last modified at 4:44 p.m. on June
17, when Roof noted, "[A]t the time of writing I am in a great
hurry."
2.2
Weapon purchase and FBI lapse
Roof
personally purchased the gun used in the shooting from a retail gun store in
Charleston, using money given to him on his birthday. The Washington Post reported on July 10,
2015, that FBI Director James
Comey said that Roof "was able to purchase the gun used in the attack
only because of lapses in the FBI's
background-check system".
One
week prior to the shooting, two of his friends tried to hide the gun after Roof
claimed he was going to kill people. However, they returned it to him after the
girlfriend of one of the friends, whose trailer they hid the gun in, pointed
out he was on probation and needed to have the gun out of his possession.
2.3
Prior to the shooting
FBI
analysis of Roof's seized cellphone and computer found that he was in online
communication with other white supremacists, according to unnamed officials.
Although Roof's contacts did not appear to have encouraged the massacre, the
investigation was said to have widened to also include other persons of
interest.
2.4
Reaction by white supremacists
Although
the Council of Conservative Citizens took down its website on June 20 in the
immediate wake of negative publicity, its president, Earl Holt, stated that the
organization was "hardly responsible" for Roof's actions. However,
the organization also issued a statement saying that Roof had some
"legitimate grievances" against black people and that the group's
website "accurately and honestly report[s] black-on-white violent
crime". Harold Covington, the founder of the Northwest
Front, also condemned Roof's actions, but called the attack "a preview of
coming attractions".
Through
analysis of his manifesto, the Southern Poverty Law Center alleged
that Roof was a reader and commenter on The
Daily Stormer, a white nationalist news website. Its editor Andrew
Anglin "repudiated Roof's crime and publicly disavowed violence, while
endorsing many of Roof's views." He claimed that while he would have
sympathy with a white man shooting criminals, killing innocents including
elderly women was "a completely insane act".
3
Manhunt and capture
The
attack was treated as a hate crime by police, and officials from the FBI were
called in to assist in the investigation and manhunt.
At
10:44 a.m., on the morning after the attack, Roof was captured in a
traffic stop in Shelby, North Carolina, approximately 245
miles (394 km) from the shooting scene. A .45-caliber pistol was found in
the car during the arrest, though it was not immediately clear if it was the
same one used in the attack. Police received a tip-off from a driver, Debbie
Dills, from Gastonia, North Carolina. She recognized
Roof driving his car, a black Hyundai
Elantra with South Carolina license plates and a three-flag "Confederate States of
America" bumper decoration, on U.S.
Route 74, recalling security camera images taken at the church and
distributed to the media. She later recalled, "I got closer and saw that
haircut. I was nervous. I had the worst feeling. Is that him or not him?"
She called her employer, who contacted local police, and then tailed the
suspect's car for 35 miles (56 km) until she was certain authorities were
moving in for an arrest.
His
older half-sister also reported him to the police after seeing his photo on the
news.
Roof
was arrested and was interrogated by the FBI. He stated that he had been
traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, when he was arrested in
Shelby. Police in Shelby deferred his questioning to the FBI. An unidentified
source said interrogations with Roof after his arrest determined he had been
planning the attack for around six months, researched Emanuel AME Church, and
targeted it because of its role in African-American history.
4
Legal proceedings
4.1
Pre-trial court proceedings
Roof
waived his extradition rights and was flown to Sheriff Al Cannon Detention
Center in North Charleston on the evening of
June 18. At the jail, his cell-block neighbor was Michael Slager, the former
North Charleston officer charged with first-degree murder in the wake of his shooting of Walter Scott. Roof confessed
to committing the Charleston attack with the intention of starting a race war,
and reportedly told investigators he almost did not go through with his mission
because members of the church study group had been so nice to him.
On
June 19, Roof was charged with nine counts of murder and one count of
possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. He first
appeared in Charleston County court by video conference at a bond hearing later
that day. At the hearing, shooting survivors and relatives of five of the
victims spoke to Roof directly, saying that they were "praying for his
soul" and forgave him. Governor Nikki
Haley has called for prosecutors to seek the death penalty for
Roof.
The
judge, Charleston County chief magistrate James "Skip" Gosnell, Jr.,
caused controversy at the bond hearing with his statement that, alongside the
dead victims and their families, "there are victims on this young man's
side of the family […] Nobody would have ever thrown them into the whirlwind of
events that they are being thrown into." Gosnell then set a $1 million
bond for the weapons possession charge and no bail on the nine counts of murder.
On
July 7, Roof was indicted on three new charges of attempted murder, one for
each person who survived the shooting. A temporary gag order
was issued by a judge on July 14 following the appearance of a letter
purportedly written by Roof on an online auction site. Seven groups, including
news media outlets, families of the slain victims, and church officials, called
for easing some restrictions placed by the gag order, particularly 9-1-1 calls.
Portions of the gag order were lifted on October 14, allowing for the release
of 9-1-1 call transcripts and other documents, but the order remained in place
for graphic crime scene photos and videos, as well as audio for the 9-1-1 calls.
4.2
State trial
On
July 16, Roof's trial in state court was scheduled by Circuit Court Judge J.C.
Nicholson to start on July 11, 2016. On July 20, Roof was ordered to
provide handwriting samples to investigators. The order explained that
following his arrest in Shelby, notes and lists were found written
on his hand and at other locations; that the handwriting samples were needed to
determine if the handwriting matched.
On
September 3, state prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said that she intended to seek
the death penalty for Roof because more than two people were killed in the
shooting and others' lives were put at risk.
On
September 16, Roof said through his attorney that he was willing to plead
guilty to the state charges in exchange for a sentence of life in prison
without parole.
Roof
reappeared in state court on October 23, 2015, at 2:00 p.m. and is
scheduled to reappear on February 5, 2016, at 9:00 a.m., before Nicholson.
Jury
selection for the state trial will start on June 28, 2016. The state trial will
begin on January 17, 2017.
4.3
Federal trial
On
July 22, it was announced that Roof will face a total of 33 federal charges.
They include nine counts of using a firearm to commit murder and 24 civil rights violations (12 hate crime
charges and 12 counts of violating a person's freedom of religion), with 18 of the charges
carrying the federal death penalty.
Roof
reappeared in court on July 31, after a hearing scheduled for July 27 was
delayed. He pleaded not guilty to the federal charges against him at the behest
of his lawyer David Bruck. Roof wanted to plead guilty, but Bruck
stated he was not willing to advise a guilty plea until the government
indicated whether it wanted to seek the death penalty. Roof's attorneys filed
motions in federal court seeking access to his statements to police, physical
evidence, and summaries of people expected to testify.
On
October 1, the trial was pushed back to at least January 2016 to give
prosecutors and Roof's attorneys more time to prepare. On December 1, the trial
was postponed again to an unknown date. He reappeared in federal court on
February 11, 2016.
On
June 9, 2016, Roof, through his lawyers, announced that he did not want to be
tried by a jury. If the request was granted, the judge presiding over his case
would hear it out by himself in its entirety. If convicted, the decision to
sentence Roof to death is also solely the judge's responsibility. Jury
selection for the federal trial is scheduled to begin on November 7, 2016.
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