Suspect in Charleston Church Killings Is Captured, Mayor Says
Thursday, June 18, 2015 11:33 AM EDT
Law enforcement officers have captured the man suspected of killing nine people at a prayer meeting at a historic black church in this city’s downtown area, the mayor of Charleston said Thursday.
Mayor Joseph P. Riley would not say where the suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, was caught, but media reports say it was some 200 miles away, in Shelby, N.C., a town east of Charlotte.
The police here have said Mr. Roof, of Columbia, is the white gunman who walked into a prayer meeting, sat down with black parishioners for nearly an hour, and then opened fire — a burst of violence that officials described as racially motivated.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the F.B.I., and the United States Attorney’s Office for South Carolina opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting, parallel to the state and local investigation, a department official said. Charleston’s police chief, Greg Mullen, called the shooting, which left six women and three men dead, a hate crime.
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