Charleston church shooting: Who is Dylann Roof?

[MastanKhan]

Unfortunately blacks are found to be more acceptable "thugs".

Hi,

Title needs to be " WHITE CHRISTIAN TERRORIST KILLS 9 BLACKS FROM A DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS DENOMINATION " ----

 

[24 Hours]

Hi,

Title needs to be " WHITE CHRISTIAN TERRORIST KILLS 9 BLACKS FROM A DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS DENOMINATION " ----

The attack seems to be more based on race rather than religion. So I don't think the religious part is necessary.

 

[Rank]

makafat-e-amal

 

[gambit]

Guys,

All you have to do is start a drive in your respective countries discouraging your own peoples coming to the US. Things are terrible in the US. I live here and I know. All I do is run to work and run home. It is not safe in the US whether you are black or white or yellow. We all live in fear of each other. It is a terrible existence for Americans. Mexicans coming to the US ? That is a lie. It is Americans who are jumping the borders. Cubans floating to the US ? Also a lie. It is Americans who are risking lives in rickety rafts trying to make it to the Marxist paradise that is Cuba.

I implore you as one human being to another. Do not come to the US.

 

[انگریز]

Please......

Even Fox News called him a terrorist. If we say he is mental ill, it is because we have access to him, his personal history, his parents, his acquaintances, and if any, his digital footprints, of the last, pretty much everyone who have access to computers have a set.

You think Osama bin Laden is mentally ill ? How about Saddam Hussein ? Assad ? Kim Jung Il ? Stalin ? Mao ?

Sure.
People who grew up during American waged wars in their country often seeing corpses all around them are never considered damaged or mentally ill.... Just Muslim terrorists.

 

[MastanKhan]

 

[Zarvan]

Please......

Even Fox News called him a terrorist. If we say he is mental ill, it is because we have access to him, his personal history, his parents, his acquaintances, and if any, his digital footprints, of the last, pretty much everyone who have access to computers have a set.

You think Osama bin Laden is mentally ill ? How about Saddam Hussein ? Assad ? Kim Jung Il ? Stalin ? Mao ?

Than its first time otherwise this is standard crap your media comes up with

 

[ghoul]

White terrorism has predated Islamist terrorism by centuries. I agree with people mentioning that media is not emphasizing the word terrorist for this person.

 

[+4vsgorillas-Apebane]

Guys,

All you have to do is start a drive in your respective countries discouraging your own peoples coming to the US. Things are terrible in the US. I live here and I know. All I do is run to work and run home. It is not safe in the US whether you are black or white or yellow. We all live in fear of each other. It is a terrible existence for Americans. Mexicans coming to the US ? That is a lie. It is Americans who are jumping the borders. Cubans floating to the US ? Also a lie. It is Americans who are risking lives in rickety rafts trying to make it to the Marxist paradise that is Cuba.

I implore you as one human being to another. Do not come to the US.

This is the funniest post youve made and its actually quite good. Keep up the light heartedness and your grand kids will visit you more often.

Much better than your usual posts telling me to go back to China.

 

[gambit]

View attachment 230488

Because the white guy did not resist.

The attack seems to be more based on race rather than religion. So I don't think the religious part is necessary.

It is whatever people want it to be. You think this thread is the first of its kind trying to drag US down to third world level ?

 

[Hack-Hook]

The Aryans are champion racist, capable of racial extermination, as per Hitler, or Dalit making, as per India.

The blacks and Islamo today go into Aryan land, and have the misconception that Aryan are pussy. These people keep shouting discrimination. Meanwhile the black keep committing crime, while the Islamo wage Jihad.

Things could end up badly.

In 19th century, Germany is the best place for Jews. Almost all the nuclear scientist, Nobel Laureate are educated in Germany.

Then sudddenly Hitler came and the rest are history.

Hitler was the byproduct of injustice of ww1 and by the way wasn't he sort of Jew that was ashamed of it .

The Aryans are champion racist, capable of racial extermination, as per Hitler, or Dalit making, as per India.

The blacks and Islamo today go into Aryan land, and have the misconception that Aryan are pussy. These people keep shouting discrimination. Meanwhile the black keep committing crime, while the Islamo wage Jihad.

Things could end up badly.

In 19th century, Germany is the best place for Jews. Almost all the nuclear scientist, Nobel Laureate are educated in Germany.

Then sudddenly Hitler came and the rest are history.

Hitler was the byproduct of injustice of ww1 and by the way wasn't he sort of Jew that was ashamed of it .

Guys,

All you have to do is start a drive in your respective countries discouraging your own peoples coming to the US. Things are terrible in the US. I live here and I know. All I do is run to work and run home. It is not safe in the US whether you are black or white or yellow. We all live in fear of each other. It is a terrible existence for Americans. Mexicans coming to the US ? That is a lie. It is Americans who are jumping the borders. Cubans floating to the US ? Also a lie. It is Americans who are risking lives in rickety rafts trying to make it to the Marxist paradise that is Cuba.

I implore you as one human being to another. Do not come to the US.

Are you aware how much of USA scientific and economic drive is fueled by foreigners .

 

[Dubious]

By Ed Payne and Ray Sanchez, CNN
Updated 1744 GMT (0044 HKT) June 19, 2015


(CNN)For a friend of Dylann Roof, talk of sparking a race war or wanting segregation reinstated was not new.

"I think he wanted something big like Trayvon Martin," his roommate Joey Meek told ABC News, referring to the black Florida teen whose shooting death at the hands of George Zimmerman -- who was acquitted of murder -- provoked huge protests. "He wanted to make something spark up the race war again."

But then again, Meek didn't think he was serious.

"He never targeted a specific black person," Meek said. "He never did any of that, so it was just pretty much a shock."

Meek didn't take his claims about Roof to authorities before Thursday morning, the day after nine people were killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, ABC reported.

Dylann Roof is escorted from the Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina, on Thursday.
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Roof is now in custody, having been caught by police about 245 miles (395 kilometers) away from the carnage in Shelby, North Carolina. He's been charged with nine counts of murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime in the church shooting, police tweeted Friday.

Emanuel AME: A storied church in a historic city

Roof is expected to have a bond hearing in a South Carolina court at 2 p.m. ET Friday.

He confessed to the shootings in interviews with the Charleston police and FBI, two law enforcement officials told Evan Perez and Wesley Bruer of CNN,the first network to report this development.He also told investigators he wanted to start a race war, one of those officials said.

Police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

The wedding of Roof's sister for this weekend has been postponed, according to the Rev. Tony Metze, pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Columbia, South Carolina.

Metze said he met with Roof's immediate family on Friday.

"What they've asked and what I ask is that we continue to hold all these families in our prayers," Metze told CNN. "And that the whole world, our nation, Charleston, our community understand that we love them. God loves them."



Friends and family


John Mullins, who attended White Knoll High School with Roof, told CNN on Thursday that the suspect was "kind of wild" but not violent.

"That's why all this is such a shock," Mullins said.

The classmate recalled Roof occasionally making racist comments, though he appeared to have black friends at the same time.

"They were just racist slurs in a sense," he said. "He would say it just as a joke. ... I never took it seriously, but now that he shed his other side, so maybe they should have been taken more seriously."

Roof like to keep a gun in his car, Meek told ABC News.

"He said he thought the black (race) in general as a race was bringing down the white race," Meek said.

Roof repeated the ninth grade at the Lexington County high school, said Mary Beth Hill of the Lexington School District, west of Columbia. She said he was "very transient," that he "came and went."

In a Washington Post interview, Roof's uncle, Carson Cowles, said his mother "never raised him to be like this."

"The whole world is going to be looking at his family who raised this monster," Cowles told the Post. "I'd be the executioner myself if they would allow it."


Before opening fire
Roof spent about an hour at the historic African-American church before the massacre, attending the prayer meeting with his eventual victims, Charleston police Chief Greg Mullen said.

Witnesses told investigators the gunman stood up and said he was there "to shoot black people," a law enforcement official said.

He answered one man's plea to stop by shooting him, said Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of the church's slain pastor who has talked to a survivor.

"'No, you've raped our women, and you are taking over the country," he said, according to Johnson. "... I have to do what I have to do."

Investigators are looking into whether Roof had links to white supremacist or other hate groups, a law enforcement official said. There's no indication so far that he was known to law enforcement officials who focus on hate groups.

A former schoolmate of Dylann Roof's described him as "kind of wild" but not violent.
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In an image tweeted by authorities in Berkeley County, South Carolina, Roof is seen wearing a jacket with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that a white minority ruled until it became independent in 1980 and changed its name to Zimbabwe.


Banned from mall
The months leading up to the shooting were a mix of troubling and odd.

Police in his hometown of Columbia -- about 120 miles northwest of Charleston -- obtained a warrant for his arrest in early March. He had been picked up on drug charges a few days earlier at Columbiana Centre mall, according to a police report.

Workers at two stores told mall security that Roof was acting strangely, asking "out of the ordinary questions," the police report said.

Roof initially said he wasn't carrying anything illegal. But he agreed to be searched, and an officer found "a small unlabeled white bottle containing multiple orange ... square strips" in his jacket, the police report said.

They turned out to be Suboxone, which is used to treat opiate addiction, according to the police report. Roof said he got the strips from a friend.

He was arrested on a drug possession charge that day in late February, but it's unclear why the March 1 arrest warrant was issued.

On April 26, police were again called to Columbiana Centre because Roof, who had been banned from the mall for a year after his drug arrest, had returned, the police report said. The ban was extended to three years after his second arrest.

The gun
Roof turned 21 in April, and a short time later he had a gun.

On Thursday, investigators did a trace of the handgun used in Wednesday's shooting and determined that it was a .45-caliber handgun Roof purchased from a Charleston gun store in April,two law enforcement officials told CNN's Perez and Bruer.

His grandfather says Roof was given "birthday money" and that the family didn't know what he did with it.

 

[Dubious]

Obama decides to call it a tragedy and link it to the gun laws...But any Muslim or Black is a terrorist or a thug and his community needs to be screened

Even when the bloody killer admitted to his heinous mindset he isnt labelled a terrorist...

(CNN) Dylann Roof admits he did it, two law enforcement officials said -- shooting and killing nine people he'd sat with for Bible study at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

But why? To start a race war.

That's what Roof told investigators, according to one of the officials.

CNN's Evan Perez and Wesley Bruer were the first to report Roof's confession. Others earlier gave a glimpse into his twisted motivation -- including at the time and site of the shooting, Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. There, a survivor told Sylvia Johnson that Roof answered one man's pleas to stop by saying, "No, you've raped our women, and you are taking over the country ... I have to do what I have to do."

His roommate told ABC News that Roof was "big into segregation." And the Berkeley County, South Carolina, government tweeted a picture of him in a jacket with flags from apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that was ruled by a white minority until it became independent in 1980.

By telling authorities his aim, Roof admitted he attacked unarmed civilians for political purposes in an act of terror.

What led the 21-year-old South Carolinian to adopt this sick reasoning and take such actions Wednesday night? Did anyone else help him or even know about his plans? And what is his general mental state? All are major, looming questions. Another is what American society should or will do now, if anything, to prevent similar tragedies.

In the meantime, nine families are left to mourn and a community is left to come together, ideally, to heal.

"This hateful person came to this community with some crazy idea that he would be able to divide," Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said. "And all he did was make us more united, and love each other even more."

Roof is expected to appear before a South Carolina judge at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, according to Charleston police. He is accused of nine counts of murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime.

Despite being held in the jail directly behind the North Charleston courthouse, Roof will appear via video for security reasons, Magistrate James B. Gosnell Jr. said.

While he wouldn't oversee any eventual trial, Gosnell will preside over Friday's hearing, at which time he can set bond on the gun-related charge but not the ones for murder, since only a circuit court judge can make that decision. Roof will be represented by Ashley Pennington, the head of the public defender's office appointed to the task.

A hearing like this typically takes 15 to 20 minutes, Gosnell said, during which police Sgt. Richard Burkhardt will lay out the case and Roof should tell the court about his status, such as where he lives, if he's employed and if he has family nearby. But this one may take longer, since one representative from each of the nine victims has a right to make a brief statement.

No question, Roof faces a long legal road ahead.

It could end in his execution, assuming he's convicted and prosecutors seek (and are granted) such a death sentence, according to South Carolina law. Gov. Nikki Haley indicated that's what she wants, while Charleston's mayor -- while he doesn't support the death penalty personally -- thinks it's inevitable.

"If you're going to have a death penalty," Riley said, "then certainly this case will merit it."

How did Dylann Roof get to the point of being accused of one of the most hateful, violent race-related crimes in recent memory?

His uncle, Carson Cowles, told The Washington Post that Roof's mother "never raised him to be like this." Those who knew him, though, paint a picture of someone who has long voiced racist sentiments, even if they never anticipated he'd act on them like this.

John Mullins recalls "racist slurs in a sense" that Roof made while the two attended White Knoll High School in Lexington, South Carolina, though he also remembers him having black friends.

"He would say it just as a joke," Mullins told CNN. "I never took it seriously. But ... maybe (I) should have."

Joey Meek told ABC that talk of reinstating segregation was nothing new for Roof, his roommate. He'd been plotting something for six months, though authorities weren't tipped off.

"I think he wanted something big like Trayvon Martin," Meek said, referring to the black Florida teen whose shooting death at the hands of George Zimmerman -- who was acquitted of murder -- provoked huge protests. "He wanted to make something spark up the race war again."

It's one thing to talk of stirring racial hatred, another to act on it to kill nine innocent people -- including the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator who had welcomed Roof into the Bible study session.

One key part of this horrific scheme -- the weapon -- came in April, when Roof bought a .45-caliber handgun at a Charleston gun store, the two law enforcement officials told Perez and Bruer from CNN, the first network to report this development. His grandfather says that Roof was given "birthday money" and that the family didn't know what Roof did with it.

He apparently didn't hint at his intentions when he went to the historic church Wednesday. A Snapchat video shows him at a table with a small group, not anything to suggest the carnage to come.

When the Bible study ended after about an hour, "they just heard just a ringing of a loud noise," Johnson said, relaying a survivor's account.

From what Johnson heard, the gunman reloaded five times. Six women died at the scene, as did two men -- with a third, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., passing away later during surgery. Johnson said her friend played dead, lying in the blood of her slain son.

Before Roof left the church, he asked one of the elderly members whether he had shot her, and she said no.

"And he said, 'Good, because we need a survivor because I'm going to kill myself,' " Johnson told CNN.

Roof then took off, hopping into his car and heading north.


Debbie Dills spotted a vehicle matching the description given by authorities, noticing the South Carolina license plate.

"I don't know what drew my attention to the car," Dills told CNN. "In my mind I'm thinking, 'That can't be.' ... I never dreamed that it would be the car."

She followed him more than 30 miles, keeping authorities updated along the way.

Police in Shelby, North Carolina -- about 245 miles (395 kilometers) from Charleston -- then pulled him over and took him into custody. He then waived extradition and returned to South Carolina late Thursday.

Federal authorities have opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting at the oldest AME church in the South, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Charleston's mayor said that society should continue to talk about issues pertaining to race and try to educate people more, like through an African-American history museum planned for a Charleston site where slaves used to land to be sold in the United States. But, he added, it may not be realistic to think you'll be able to change the minds of all racists.

"There's a lot of things we can do, in our country, to enhance the dialogue about race," Riley said. "But to get (hateful thoughts) out of the minds of very evil people ... is very difficult."

CNN's Betsy Klein, Carma Hassan, Ray Sanchez, Laura Smith-Spark, Paul Murphy and Brian Todd contributed to this report.

 

[Nicky G]

Plenty of racists in US, plenty of guns too. A dangerous combo.

Jon Stewart summed it well, as he tends to; this time without humor.

Jon Stewart Tells No Jokes About Charleston Church Shooting

Stewart expressed hopelessness about racism in America, and particularly in Charleston. “The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina,” he said, “and the roads are named for Confederate generals — and the white guy’s the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him.”

 

[Kabira]

As expected, he has been declared mentally ill