The FBI says the suspect in the murder of nine people at a historic Charleston, SC church is named Dylann Roof.
According to The Post and Courier, an FBI spokesperson says a 21-year old man named Dylann Storm Roof is the suspect in the shooting massacre at a Charleston, South Carolina church last night.
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Nine people, six women and three men, were murdered at the historically Black church that since the 1800s has been central to the Civil Rights Movement. Among the dead are the church’s pastor, State Senator Clementa Pinckney.
“Public records show Roof was most recently arrested in March in Lexington County on drug charges,” WISTV reports. “Roof is described as a white male, 21 years old with a bowl cut haircut, slender/small build, grey sweat shirt, blue jeans and clean shaven. He is considered armed and dangerous.”
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The Post and Courier adds, “Roof has been arrested twice in South Carolina as an adult, according to the State Law Enforcement Division. He was jailed March 1 in Lexington County on a drug charge and again on April 26 on a trespassing charge.”
The Daily Beast observes that his “sparse Facebook page shows an image of Roof in a jacket with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, which was apartheid state before it became Zimbabwe,” and adds, “Many of his Facebook friends, including those from his high school, are black.”
The FBI is at Roof’s mother’s home and interviewed his uncle, Carson Cowles, Reuters reports.
“The man suspected of fatally shooting nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday, was given a gun by his father as a 21st birthday present in April, his uncle told Reuters on Thursday.”
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