New report has emerged that the suspect, Dylann Roof, got a gun as his 21st birthday present from his father.
Roof has been taken into custody in Shelby, North Carolina, law enforcement officers said.
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Dylann Roof,
21, of Lexington, South Carolina, is the suspect in Wednesday’s deadly
shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the Charleston police
said Thursday. He may be driving a black Hyundai with vehicle tag
LGF330, police said.
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The person
who shot and killed nine people at Charleston’s Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church was there for about an hour, attending a
meeting with the eventual victims, before he began shooting, Charleston
police Chief Greg Mullen said Thursday morning.
Of the nine people killed, six were female and three were male.
The suspect
is in his early 20s and stands 5 feet, 9 inches tall. “He has on a very
distinctive sweatshirt as well as the vehicle, with a very distinctive
license plate,” the police chief said.
——————————————————————————————–
Police
have launched a manhunt after nine people were killed in a mass
shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.
The
shooting happened at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in
downtown Charleston at around 9pm (local time) on Wednesday night.
Police
said eight people had died at the scene and a ninth victim died later
in hospital. A tenth victim is being treated in hospital.
Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen confirmed the shooting was being investigated as a hate crime.
The
city’s mayor Joe Riley said: “This is an unspeakable and heartbreaking
tragedy in this most historic church, an evil and hateful person took
the lives of citizens who had come to worship and pray together.”
Shortly
after the shooting, people were told to move back after a bomb threat
was made in the area, the Reuters news agency reported.
A
police spokesman said they were looking for a slim white male suspect,
aged around 21 and wearing a grey sweatshirt, blue jeans and Timberland
boots.
A
police helicopter was assisting officers on the ground – wearing
bulletproof vests and carrying guns – with the search for the shooter
and the FBI were also investigating.
Cameras
at the scene filmed police taking a white man in a grey T-shirt into a
nearby Marriott hotel – but law enforcement officials said they were
still looking for the gunman.
Local
media said the more than 150-year-old Emmanuel AME church has a
predominantly black congregation and is one of the oldest in the
country.
Fox News reported that a bible study session is held in the basement every Wednesday evening.
The
church’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney, is also a state senator and is
thought to have been in the building at the time of the shooting.
Tearful relatives were seen gathering at the edge of the police cordon, where they were speaking to emergency services workers.
Charleston
Governor Nikki Haley said in a statement: “While we do not yet know all
of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates
anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of
another.”
Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush announced he was cancelling a scheduled appearance in Charleston on Thursday.
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