By Kenneth Atisele
Officers have arrested the man suspected of killing nine people at a Bible study meeting at a historic black church in the downtown area of Charleston on Thursday, June 18.
Joseph P. Riley, Mayor of the town did not reveal the location of arrest of the suspected 21 year-old Dylann Storm ‘Roof’ but media reports say it was some 200 miles away, in Shelby, N.C., a town east of Charlotte.
Officers have said ‘Roof’ of the Columbia area, 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 have 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.
