Dylann Roof (b. April 3, 1994) was a right-wing terrorist who was accused of murdering nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015. Of those killed were Clementa C. Pinckney, who was a senior pastor as well as the state senator of South Carolina. Roof shot another individual at the church, but that would-be victim survived.
Roof was charged with nine counts of murder, and the current governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley is trying to push for his execution.
Biography
Early life
Roof was born in Columbia, South Carolina. His father, Franklin Bennett, divorced his stepmother, Paige Mann, ten years prior to the shooting at the Charleston church. Roof went to several schools, but he eventually dropped out, and he took to playing video games and doing drugs. He also alternated between living with Bennett and with Mann.
According to a former high school classmate of Roof's, he had several friends who were black, and he never expressed any disdain for them. However, it was believed that Roof had been planning something like the upcoming shooting for months.
Charleston church shooting
On the evening of June 17, 21015, a mass shooting broke out in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a routine bible study. The shooter, later identified as Roof, apparently lived in Eastover at the time of the attack.