Charleston mass murder suspect Dylann Roof was being returned to South Carolina Thursday afternoon, after being arrested about an hour west of Charlotte in Cleveland County.
The 21-year-old Columbia-area resident was arrested just before 11 a.m. Thursday on the western edge of Shelby. Earlier in the morning, authorities say, Roof used a card at a gas station ATM at Providence Road and Ballantyne Commons Parkway in Charlotte.
He was pulled over about five hours later and 50 miles away on U.S. 74 and Plato-Lee Road in Shelby, not far from Gardner-Webb University.
Shortly before 4 p.m., the slender Roof, wearing a white T-shirt and a bullet-proof vest, was led handcuffed from the Shelby Police Department to a waiting police car, apparently to take him to court. Later in the day, Roof was scheduled to board a small plane for the return trip to Charleston, where he’ll be formally charged with one of the worst race crimes in American history.
The FBI has identified Roof as the suspect in the Wednesday night slaughter of nine members of a prayer group in Charleston’s most historic African American church. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Columbia confirmed Thursday that “an active hate crime investigation” is underway.
“The most important point is that the subject is now in custody; the immediate threat to the community does not exist,” said John Strong of Charlotte, head of FBI operations in North Carolina.
A tearful S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley captured some of the emotions of the day. “The heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” she said.
Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford said his department received word from Kings Mountain police that a black sedan resembling Roof’s car was seen heading west on U.S. 74.
The tip had been called in from Frady Florists in Kings Mountain, the Shelby Star reported. Frady employee Debbie Dills spotted Roof’s car and noticed his distinctive bowl-shaped haircut while she was driving from her home in Gastonia to work, the Star reported. She called her boss, who then called police.
“Since it happened, I was praying for them and the church,” she said through tears, according to the paper. “I was in the right place at the right time that the Lord puts you.”
Police pulled over Roof at 10:45 a.m., Ledford said, adding that Charleston police and the FBI then arrived in Shelby “to work through the process of getting Dylann Roof back to South Carolina.”
After Roof’s arrest in Shelby, his black sedan remained parked in the driveway of a white bungalow at a busy intersection on U.S. 74, the main road through the foothills city and a popular route to the North Carolina mountains.
Elaine Elmore, who lives across the highway, said she knew something was wrong when she noticed Shelby police cars. She did not see Roof’s arrest.
“It’s scary to know that could happen right here,” she said, resting in a swing in her yard. “That would scare anybody, to know somebody that cold was right here. He could have come across the street and shot me sitting here.”
Jackie Sibley, a vice president of tourism for the Cleveland County Chamber of Commerce, said she was driving to work and talking to her sister-in-law on the phone when she noticed helicopters whirring above U.S. 74. The sister-in-law told her that the suspect in the church shootings had been captured in Shelby.
That’s when Sibley said she saw the black sedan surrounded by police cars. “I immediately said, ‘Holy cow! I think I just drove to the scene of the capture,” Sibley said in an email to the Observer.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Columbia says attorneys there are working with the FBI and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department in an “active hate crime investigation,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Beth Drake told the Observer.
It’s unclear why Roof drove to Charlotte. Authorities say he stopped in the city to use an ATM just after dawn. WSOC-TV identified the location as a gas station at Providence Road and Ballantyne Commons Parkway. A worker at a Shell convenience store on that site declined to confirm Roof’s stop, saying she did not want to get into trouble by talking.
According to Roof’s Facebook page, he attended White Knoll High School in Lexington, S.C., a predominantly white suburb of Columbia. His page was no longer active later Thursday afternoon.
In March of this year, Roof was charged with first-offense drug possession in Lexington County, according to court records. The case status is listed as pending.
Nine people died from the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday night.
Among the dead are S.C. state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, a pastor at Emanuel AME, and Cynthia Hurd, the sister of Malcolm Graham, a former N.C. senator from Charlotte.
Reporting from The Charlotte Observer and The (Columbia) State.
Full coverage
▪ Charleston shooting suspect captured in Shelby
▪ Through tears, Malcolm Graham remembers a ‘beautiful’ sister and a senseless death
▪ Qcitymetro.com: Shelby residents react to capture of suspect
▪ Charlotte’s black churches react, look to assess security after Charleston shooting
▪ What is known about the Charleston shooting
▪ Charlotte reacts to Charleston shooting on social media
▪ Pinckney ‘was the moral conscience of the General Assembly’
▪ Our view: Now, with Charleston, we mourn again
▪ Guest book: Post thoughts and condolences for Charleston victims
Leave a Reply