CBS News – Dylann Storm Roof, the suspect in a deadly rampage at a historic black church in South Carolina, has been arrested in North Carolina, sources tell CBS News.
The shooting took place at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The suspect attended the meeting at the church Wednesday night and stayed for nearly an hour before the deadly gunfire erupted, Police Chief Greg Mullen said.
“You can’t put your mind around it,” the Rev. Norvel Goff, a presiding elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, said on “CBS This Morning” Thursday. “You cannot identify this kind of evil on this level because it is so horrific and unbelievable.”
On Thursday morning, a Justice Department spokesperson told CBS News a hate crime investigation was being opened into the shooting, which killed six women and three men, including the church’s pastor.
CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues reports from Charleston that three people survived the shooting. Police released few details about their condition.
The pastor, state Sen. Clementa 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 chamber at the time. “He never had anything bad to say about anybody, even when I thought he should,” State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford said. “He was always out doing work either for his parishioners or his constituents. He touched everybody.
Goff, who helps oversee the Emanuel AME Church, called Pinckney “a very energetic, promising, very active pastor and political leader in our state, which had a bright future.
“There was no limit to where Rev. Sen. Pinckney would have ended up,” Goff said on “CBS This Morning.” “But most certainly those of us who knew him, labored with him in the various segments of our community, he was a bridge-builder, he was a family man.”
Goff said Pinckney is survived by a wife and two daughters.
Mullen said eight victims were found dead inside the church and the ninth died at a hospital.
