On Wednesday night, Dylann Roof walked into a Charleston, S.C. church and sat down with a Bible study group. But instead of finding Jesus, he “allegedly” shot nine black people dead.
As we reported earlier, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of the 200-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, was among the Charleston shooter’s victims. Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen declared this was the “worst night” of his career, and suspected it was a hate crime from the get-go. Only three survived Roof’s (alleged) assault.
“I believe this was a hate crime. It will be investigated as a hate crime.”
And sure enough, NBC caught up with Sylvia Johnson, the slain pastor’s cousin confirmed this. Johnson told NBC that one of the three survivors gave her an account of what happened. Roof came into the church and asked for the pastor. Someone brought him to the Bible study group, where he sat next to Pinckney until the session ended. Then he began shooting, stopping five times to reload. The survivor’s son “tried to talk him out of doing the act of killing” to no avail. The survivor then told Johnson why he (allegedly) “had to do it.”
“I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Here’s the video with Johnson recounting what the unnamed survivor told her after the Charleston shooting.
Chillingly, Charleston NAACP President Dot Scott told CNN Roof spared the survivor’s life so she could give an account of what happened.
“Her life was spared, and (she was) told, ‘I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to spare you, so you can tell them what happened.’”
How Did The Charleston Shooter Get His Gun?
So how did the Charleston shooter get his gun? the New York Daily News reports Roof’s father gave him a gun for his 21st birthday.
The suspected gunman who massacred nine people inside a historic black South Carolina church Wednesday got a gun for his 21st birthday in April and bragged last week about his plans to “kill a bunch of people,” sources said.
Seriously? Roof gets a gun for his birthday, and tells his friends and neighbors in the trailer park where he lived that he plans to “kill a bunch of people,” and nobody calls the police? Oh, they just thought he was joking. The 21-year-old suspected gunman told his trailer park friends last week that he wanted to kill people at a local college (apparently, he changed his mind and killed people at a black church instead) — but no one took him seriously because of his deadpan sense of humor, his neighbor Christon Scriven told the New York Daily News.
“He flat out told us he was going to do this stuff […] He’s weird. You don’t know when to take him seriously and when not to.”
The media will portray this kid as a “disturbed loner” and everyone will wring their hands and call for “healing.” But really, this kid is a racist murderer. His father apparently raised him to believe black people are “raping our women” and “taking over our country,” and then gave him a gun for his birthday. When we tolerate and teach children this kind of hate, and then make it easy for crazy people, murderers and white terrorists to get hold of guns, what do we expect will happen?
CNN reports police captured Roof as he drove through Shelby, N.C., and took him into custody Thursday afternoon. Alive. And unharmed.
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.
The BOLO and “wanted” notice also described Roof as “armed and dangerous.” Roof had a gun on him, but police described him as “cooperative.” Law enforcement’s handling the Charleston shooting as a hate crime, and that’s a good thing. But can you imagine how this arrest would have gone down if Roof had been black?
