Charleston church shooting suspect arrested in N.C., source says
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Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Roof has been taken into custody in North Carolina, a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told CNN’s Deborah Feyerick.
Roof, 21, of Lexington, South Carolina, is the suspect in Wednesday’s deadly shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, city police said Thursday.
Witnesses say the suspect stood up and said he was there “to shoot black people,” a law enforcement official said. The shooter is also thought to have used a handgun, according to the official.
They got him.
The man suspected of killing nine people Wednesday night at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, was arrested Thursday morning about three hours away near Shelby, North Carolina, law enforcement authorities said.
Investigators identified the suspect as Dylann Roof, 21, of Lexington, South Carolina.
The man spent an hour in a prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night before he opened fire, Charleston police Chief Greg Mullen said Thursday morning.
A law enforcement official says witnesses told them the suspect stood up and said he was there “to shoot black people.”
Among the victims was the church’s politically active pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, his cousin, South Carolina state Sen. Kent Williams, told CNN.
Pinckney was also a state senator and one of the black community’s spokesmen after the slaying of an unarmed man by a North Charleston police officer earlier this year.
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