Suspected race-hate killer, 21, is a meth and cocaine-using pill popper who got a gun for his birthday, proudly wears apartheid flags and has a Confederate license plate
- Roof, of Columbia, South Carolina, had recently been given a gun by his father as a birthday present, his uncle has revealed
- Roof's Facebook photo shows him wearing a jacket that has flags of apartheid South Africa and white-rule Rhodesia sewn on
- A massive manhunt end 250 miles away away in Shelby, NC where Roof was arrested before noon on Thursday
- In the months leading up to the shooting, roof worked in the landscaping business and lived near a Lexington-area trailer park, friends said
Dylann
Roof, the man police say went on a shooting rampage in an historically
black South Carolina church murdering nine people Wednesday, has been
pictured wearing a jacket bearing flags from apartheid-era South Africa
and what was once white-rule Rhodesia.
The
21-year-old Columbia-area man--who friends describe as a frequent
abuser of prescription drugs--was arrested twice this year, Lexington
County court records reveal, on charges of trespassing and drug
possession.
Roof,
who became the focus of a massive manhunt after he fled the church in
downtown Charleston, was given a gun by his father as a 21st birthday
present in April, his uncle told Reuters on Thursday.
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Arrested: Authorities caught up with
alleged racist Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof in Shelby, North
Carolina, over 200 miles from the carnage he allegedly left behind,
before noon on Thursday
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Dylann Roof, the man police say went
on a shooting rampage in an historically black South Carolina church
murdering nine people Wednesday, has been pictured wearing a jacket
bearing flags from apartheid-era South Africa and what was once
white-rule Rhodesia
Classmate: A woman claiming to have
been a classmate of Roof's called him quiet but also, the type person
who might 'blow up some ish'
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Symbol od hate: After the end of
apartheid, South Africa adopted a new national flag in 1994 and the
previous flag has since been adopted by white supremacists as a symbol
of racial hatred
Another flag on Roof's jacket appeared to be of white-rule Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe
In
the hours after the bloodbath, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil
rights group that tracks hate organizations and extremists, said it was
not aware of Roof before the rampage. And some friends said they did
not know him to be racist.
'I never thought he'd do something like this,' said high school friend Antonio Metze, 19. 'He had black friends.'
A
young man with a blunt sugar-bowl haircut, Roof used to skateboard in a
Lexington suburb in South Carolina when he was younger and had long
hair then.
Childhood
friend Joey Meek had seen him as recently as Tuesday, said Meek's
mother, Kimberly Konzny. She said she didn't know why he was in
Charleston and was not aware of his being involved in any church groups
or saying anything racist.
'I
don't know what was going through his head,' Konzny said. 'He was a
really sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had a few friends.'
Joey
Meek alerted the FBI after he and his mother instantly recognized Roof
in a surveillance camera image that was widely circulated after the
shooting.
In
the image, Roof had the same stained sweatshirt he wore while playing
Xbox video games in their home recently, Konzny said. It was stained
because he had worked at a landscaping and pest control business, she
said.
Roof
attended ninth grade at White Knoll High during the 2008-09 school year
and went there for the first half of the following academic year,
district spokeswoman Mary Beth Hill said. The school system gave no
reason for Roof's departure and said it had no record of him attending
any other schools in the district.
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A photo that appears to show Roof
sitting on the hood of the black Hyundai seen in surveillance footage,
the one in which he allegedly fled from the scene Wednesday, shows a
novelty plate on the front bumper
Roof's bumper proudly displays this novelty plate in celebration of the slave-holding Confederate states
'He was pretty smart, though,' Metze said. 'I can't believe he'd do something like it.'
Meanwhile,
Roof's friend Christon Scriven, who is black, told the New York Daily
News that his friend had told them his plans to for a mass killing.
'He
flat out told us he was going to do this stuff,' said Scriven. But, he
said, 'He’s weird. You don’t know when to take him seriously and when
not to.'
Law
enforcement officers were at the home of Dylann Roof's mother on
Thursday morning, the uncle, Carson Cowles, said in an interview.
Cowles
said he recognized Roof in a photo released by police, and described
him as quiet and soft-spoken. Roof's father gave him a .45-caliber
pistol for his birthday this year, Cowles said.
Authorities
caught up with Roof in Shelby, North Carolina, over 200 miles from the
carnage he allegedly left behind, before noon on Thursday.
'Nobody
in my family had seen anything like this coming,' Cowles said. 'I said,
if it is him, and when they catch him, he's got to pay for this.'
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Images on a flier provided to media,
Thursday, June 18, 2015, by the Charleston Police Department show
surveillance footage of a man police say is Roof before he murdered nin
church goers on Wednesday
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Previous offense: Dylann Roof was arrested in April on a trespassing charge in Lexington Count
He flat out told us he was going to do this stuff
Roof's friend Christon Scriven
He
said he had told his sister, Roof's mother, several years ago that Roof
was too introverted and worried he was cooped up in his room too much.
'I
said he was like 19 years old, 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.
A woman who answered the cellphone of the suspect's mother Amelia Roof, also known as Amy, declined to comment.
'We will be doing no interviews ever,' she said, before hanging up.
Roof,
who attended White Knoll High School in Lexington, South Carolina, had
in recent days befriended at least one black former classmate on the
social media site, where his profile photo shows him scowling as he
wears the jacket with racist emblems.
Many of Roof's older Facebook friends are black, as well.
A high school classmate of Roof's, John Mullins, told The Daily Beast that the accused white supremacist killer was 'kind of wild' and a big time prescription drug abuser.
'He
used drugs heavily a lot,' Mullins said. 'It obviously harder than
marijuana. He was like a pill popper, from what I understood. Like
Xanax, and stuff like that.'
Court records reveal that a February drug charge cited Roof's possession of methamphetamine, cocaine and LSreports.
Mullins
said White Knoll High had 'a lot of preps, a little bit of gang
members, and a lot of outcasts' but that Roof—despite his uncle's
assertion his nephew was 'too introverted'—was not one of those
outcasts.
'I
never heard him say anything, but just he had that kind of Southern
pride, I guess some would say. Strong conservative beliefs,' he said.
'He made a lot of racist jokes, but you don't really take them seriously
like that. You don't really think of it like that.'
Speaking
to Daily Mail Online former neighbor John Albert Walker recalled: 'I
remember him as a nice little white kid, eight or nine years old,
playing out in the yard or on the street. As I would drive by I'd wave
to the kids out in the yard. I knew his sister. She'd come and rake my
yard. His sister was very helpful, she must have been 11 or 12 at that
point. They were helpful kids, nice little kids.
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A mannhunt is underway for Dylann
Roof, the 21-year-old named as the suspect who murdered nine
parishioners in a South Carolina church
'I
find what's happened astounding - that somebody would do something like
that. I'm shocked. I knew [his uncle] Carson well enough to have a beer
with. He and his sister [Dylann's mother Amelia] seemed not to be
anywhere near racist or discriminatory. They seemed like really nice
people.'
He added:
'The
Redbank area is pretty good that way other than that the Grand Dragon
of the Klu Klux Klan, Horace King, lived between the Redbank and
Fairfield areas in Lexington. I don't know if the KKK is still active
there.'
Mr
Walker described the area as 'pretty mixed race.' He said: 'There are
people of Mexican descent, Anglo descent, Asian…most of the people that
live here are people who work at the University as either a professor or
something.'
Reflecting on Dylann's actions he said: 'I just don't know what could have happened with him.'
Another woman claiming via Twitter to be former a classmate of Roof's wrote Thursday:
'Dylann use to be a super emo, with long blonde hair and he was pretty quiet,' Kimberly Taylor tweeted. 'I always said he look like the cry type to blow some ish up'
Another classmate of Roof's, Adam Martin, told the Daily Beast that the accused mass killer wasn't bullied at their school.
'It
wasn't like he got picked on. The school we went to...is so diverse he
just couldn't have gotten picked on,' he said. 'Everyone is so
different.'
A
witness to Wednesday's massacre said Roof said before the shooting: 'I
have to do it...You rape our women and you're taking over the country.'
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A Charleston police officer searches
for a shooting suspect outside the Emanuel AME Church, in downtown
Charleston, S.C. on Wednesday
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Manhunt: A huge manhunt ensued with
officers wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying guns. Roof was
apprehended Thursday before noon some 250 miles away
On
Wednesday, he allegedly entered the church and joined the group before
suddenly opening fire an hour later. One survivor recounted how he
reloaded his gun five times as he picked off his victims - killing three
females and six males, including the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who is
also a South Carolina state senator.
Pinckney's cousin told NBC News that one of the survivors told her they had urged Roof to stop.
Roof
spared one woman so she could 'tell the world what happened', eye
witnesses recounted, while a five-year-old girl also survived the attack
after her grandmother told her to play dead.
Police
released photographs from surveillance video Thursday morning of the
suspect and a dark colored sedan that may have been the getaway vehicle.
'This
is a very dangerous individual,' Police Chief Greg Mullen said. 'We
want to identify this individual and arrest him before he hurts anyone
else.'
The
suspect stayed for nearly an hour at the prayer meeting Wednesday night
before shooting the victims - six females and three males, Mullen said.
Mullen did not give other details and said names would be released after families were notified.
But
State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford told The Associated Press
that the Emanuel AME Church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was
among those killed.
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Getaway vehicle: The suspect was pictured leaving the church in a black four door sedan which has a distinctive license plate
Pinckney,
41, was a married father of two who was elected to the state House at
age 23, making him the youngest member of the House at the time.
On
Thursday, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, the FBI
and the U.S. Attorney's Office have launched a hate crime investigation
into the mass shooting, ABC reported. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives and other agencies have joined the
investigation, Mullen said.
The
killer is believed to have entered the church around 8pm before taking
part in the prayer group for about an hour, police said.
Although
it is a black church, it would not be surprising to see a white person -
or a person of any other race - attending a gathering there,
Charleston's NAACP President Dot Scott told CNN on Thursday.
Speaking
in the NBC interview, Pinckney's cousin said Roof had specifically
asked for the reverend before sitting beside him throughout the meeting.
The
Reverend Norvel Goff, a presiding elder for the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, told the Washington Post that the suspect 'walked in,
from my understanding, not so much as a participant, but as a brief
observer who then stood up and then started shooting'.
Police received the first call about the shooting shortly after 9pm.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
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