Church Shooter Identified…Caught .

A white man opened fire dur­ing a prayer meet­ing inside a his­toric black church in down­town Charleston on Wednesday night, killing nine peo­ple, includ­ing the pas­tor, in an assault that author­i­ties described as a hate crime.

Police have iden­ti­fied the alleged shoot­er as Dylann Storm Roof.
In an ear­li­er press con­fer­ence, Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen iden­ti­fied the vic­tims of the Wednesday church night shoot­ing as six females and three males. He says names won’t be released until fam­i­lies are notified.

Mullen said the sus­pect attend­ed a meet­ing at the Emanuel AME Church and stayed for almost an hour before gun­fire erupted.

The shoot­er remains at large and police released pho­tographs from sur­veil­lance video of a sus­pect and a pos­si­ble get­away vehicle.Mullen said he could not offer a make and mod­el on the dark col­ored sedan because inves­ti­ga­tors were not cer­tain about what is shown in the video.

Roof is described as a white man thought to be in his ear­ly 20s and is con­sid­ered to be a “very dan­ger­ous individual.“Earlier, Mullen said he had no rea­son to think the sus­pect has left the Charleston area, but is dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion about him and the vehi­cle around the country.

“We want to iden­ti­fy this indi­vid­ual and arrest him before he hurts any­one else,” the chief said.
Mullen said the scene at the church was chaot­ic when police arrived, and the offi­cers thought they had the sus­pect tracked with a police dog, but he got away.

“We will put all effort, we will put all resources and we will put all of our ener­gy into find­ing this indi­vid­ual who com­mit­ted this crime tonight,” he said.

The FBI will aid the inves­ti­ga­tion, Mullen told a news con­fer­ence that was attend­ed by FBI Special Agent in Charge David A. Thomas.

Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley called the shoot­ing “the most unspeak­able and heart­break­ing tragedy.”

“The only rea­son that some­one could walk into a church and shoot peo­ple pray­ing is out of hate,” Riley said. “It is the most das­tard­ly act that one could pos­si­bly imag­ine, and we will bring that per­son to jus­tice. … This is one hate­ful person.“State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford told The Associated Press that the church’s pas­tor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed.

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.

“He nev­er had any­thing bad to say about any­body, even when I thought he should,” Rutherford, D‑Columbia, said. “He was always out doing work either for his parish­ioners or his con­stituents. He touched everybody.”

The attack came two months after the fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, by a white police offi­cer in neigh­bor­ing North Charleston that sparked major protests and high­light­ed racial ten­sions in the area. The offi­cer has been charged with mur­der, and the shoot­ing prompt­ed South Carolina law­mak­ers to push through a bill help­ing all police agen­cies in the state get body cam­eras. Pinckney was a spon­sor of that bill.

In a state­ment, Gov. Nikki Haley asked South Carolinians to pray for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies and decried vio­lence at reli­gious institutions.

“We’ll nev­er under­stand what moti­vates any­one to enter one of our places of wor­ship and take the life of anoth­er,” Haley said.

Soon after Wednesday night’s shoot­ing, a group of pas­tors hud­dled togeth­er pray­ing in a cir­cle across the street​.Community orga­niz­er Christopher Cason said he felt cer­tain the shoot­ings were racial­ly motivated.

“I am very tired of peo­ple telling me that I don’t have the right to be angry,” Cason said. “I am very angry right now.”

Even before Scott’s shoot­ing in April, Cason said he had been part of a group meet­ing with police and local lead­ers to try to shore up relations.

The Emmanuel AME church is a his­toric African-American church that traces its roots to 1816, when sev­er­al church­es split from Charleston’s Methodist Episcopal church.

One of its founders, Denmark Vesey, tried to orga­nize a slave revolt in 1822. He was caught, and white landown­ers had his church burned in revenge. Parishioners wor­shiped under­ground until after the Civil War.

SUSPECT IN CHARLESTON CHURCH SHOOTING IDENTIFIED