Monday, March 18, 2024

Dylann Roof Admits to Church Massacre in Chilling Detail; Mother Suffers Heart Attack in Court

Dylann Storm Roof, center, with his lawyers, during jury selection Monday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, S.C. Robert Maniscalco
Dylann Storm Roof, center, with his lawyers, during jury selection Monday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, S.C.

*Dylann Roof was quick to confess to the massacre of nine African American church parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, according to an FBI video played Friday at his murder trial in Charleston, South Carolina.

“I went to that church in Charleston and I did it,” he told investigators with a laugh, according to reports. It was his first words of a two-hour confession that was played in court.

“Did you shoot them?” a law enforcement officer asked in the video.

“Yes,” Roof replied matter-of-factly, laughing again.

Asked how many people he killed that day, he calmly replied: “If I was going to guess, five maybe. I’m really not sure.”

According to CNN, Roof is “seen in the video sitting at a circular table at the Shelby, North Carolina, police department. He occasionally gestures with his hands but his voice — deep and monotone — betrays no emotion.”

In the video, Roof said he fired 70 rounds with a Glock .45-caliber pistol that night in June 2015. A dozen people had stood to offer prayers at the Bible study, with their eyes closed, prosecutors said. Roof told investigators he carried seven magazines, a bag and his weapon into the church and sat with his victims for about 15 minutes.

“I was sitting there thinking if I should do it or not for 15 minutes,” Roof said, according to the video. “I could have walked out. I don’t want to say it was spur of the moment.”

“Somebody had to do it,” Roof continued, stressing “black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.”

Roof said he acted alone after researching the city and the church.

“I like Charleston,” he said in the video. “It’s historic, too, you know. I think at one time it had the highest ratio of blacks to white during slavery, and AME is a historic church. I researched black churches.”

After sketching out the massacre scene for investigators, Roof said he emptied seven magazines. His victims tried to hide under tables, he recalled. No one tried to escape.

“It was pop, pop, pop,” he said, adding that he didn’t shoot a woman who was looking at him.

Roof said he was “in absolute awe” that police weren’t waiting for him outside once he left the church.

Roof said what he did was “political” and that he considered himself “a white supremacist.”

“Our people are superior,” he said. “That’s just the fact.”

His views on race were awakened by the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, he said. He talked about Muslims overrunning parts of Europe. He said he supported Hitler.
Asked by an investigator if his crime made him feel “glad,” Roof said: “I had to do it. I wouldn’t say I was glad.”

When told he had killed eight people at the scene and a ninth died at a hospital, Roof said, “Well, it makes me feel bad.”

Before his confession, Roof ate a Burger King hamburger brought to him by police officers.

On Wednesday, Roof’s mother suffered a heart attack in the courtroom soon after prosecutors began laying out their death penalty case against her son. She reportedly said “I’m sorry” several times as family members and court security came to her aid.

Roof’s attorney mentioned the heart attack in court documents asking for a mistrial, saying a survivor’s testimony was so emotional that “spectators and even court personnel — including members of the prosecution and defense — were crying with her.”

The documents didn’t give the mother’s current condition.

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