The 2015 Charleston Church Massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015. Dylann Roof murdered nine Black people including the senior pastor and South Carolina State Senator Clementa C. Pinkney during a prayer service at the church. The racially motivated shooting led to the South Carolina Assembly to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds.
The shooting took place on a Wednesday around 9:05 pm at Emanuel AME during Bible study. According to survivors who witnessed the shooting, Roof was invited in for fellowship and sat next to Senator Pinkney. Roof took his firearm from his fanny pack and opened fire first on twenty-six-year-old Tywanza Sanders. The other victims were eighty-seven-year-old Susie Jackson, the great aunt of Sanders, Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton Doctor, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson, and Clementa C. Pinckney.
Roof left the church after the shooting. After an FBI-led national manhunt, Roof was captured the next morning at a traffic stop in Shelby, North Carolina, 243 miles northwest of Charleston. Roof was arrested and returned to a Detention Center in North Charleston, South Carolina. Roof would later confess to the murders, saying that he wanted the murders to start a race war. Roof also said he almost changed his mind about the shootings because church members had been very nice to him.
On June 19, 2015, Roof was charged with nine counts of murder and one count of possession of a firearm. That same day, Roof appeared in Charleston County court via video conference at a bond hearing where the victim’s families spoke to Roof and forgave him. On June 26, 2015, Clementa Pinckney’s funeral was held the next day at the basketball arena of the College of Charleston where President Barack Obama gave the eulogy. Funerals for the other victims, Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson, and Cynthia Graham Hurd, took place the following day. The last victim, Daniel Simmons, was buried on July 2, 2015.
On July 7, 2015, Roof was indicted on nine murder charges along with other federal charges that included hate crime and civil rights violations charges. His trial began in Charleston on December 7, 2016 and on December 15. Roof was found guilty on thirty-three charges against him and was sentenced to death on January 10, 2017; however, the sentence was later reduced to life in prison without parole on April 10, 2017.
Sources:
Momodu, S. (2017, September 30) The Charleston Church Massacre (2015). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/charleston-church-massacre-2015/
Link to original source