Nine killed in Charleston church shooting

A young man who had been attending a Bible study for an hour suddenly began shooting in a Charleston, SC, church, killing 9 people–six women and three men, including the pastor.  The shooter, a 21 year old white supremacist, was arrested.  The church is an African-American congregation.

From White suspect arrested in killing of nine at black U.S. church | Reuters:

A white man suspected of killing nine people in a Bible-study group at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina was arrested on Thursday and U.S. officials are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

Law enforcement officials detained alleged gunman Dylann Roof, 21, after a traffic stop in Shelby, North Carolina, about 220 miles (350 km) north of Charleston, said police chief Gregory Mullen.

Wednesday’s mass shooting, which occurred after the suspect had sat with parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for an hour, follows months of protests over killings of black men which have shaken the United States.

In a Facebook profile apparently belonging to Roof, a portrait showed him wearing a jacket emblazoned with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and of the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, both formerly ruled by white minorities.

The victims, six females and three males, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church’s 41-year-old pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate.

Read this for details about the shooter.