Charleston shooting: police arrest Dylann Roof

Police have arrested Dylann Roof who, in his Facebook photo, is shown with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and the flag of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) on his jacket.

The city’s police chief has described Wednesday’s attack as a “hate crime.” The 21-year-old is accused of killing nine people after opening fire in the historic African-American church in Charleston.

The chief of police, Gregory Mullen said the gunman sat with churchgoers inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for about an hour on Wednesday before he started shooting. Six women and three men died, including Reverend Clementa Pinckney who was the church’s pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate.

In his Facebook profile Dylann Roof says he goes to White Knoll High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

His uncle, Carson Cowles, told reporters from Reuters that he was given a .45 caliber pistol by his father as a 21st birthday present in April.

“The more I look at him, the more I’m convinced, that’s him,” Carson Cowles, 56, said in a phone interview.

He went on to say that law enforcement officers visited the suspect’s mother’s home this morning.

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting.

Read more: Charleston shooting: nine killed in 'hate-crime' attack

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, President Barack Obama said “our thoughts and prayers” are with the people of Charleston and that “any death of this sort is a tragedy, any shooting involving multiple victims is a tragedy but there is something particularly heart-breaking about a death happening in a place in which we seek solace and peace, in a place of worship.”

Mr Obama went on to say that America needed to have a debate about its gun laws saying, “I have had to make statements like this too many times.”

“Communities like this have had to endure tragedy like this too many times. We don’t have all the facts but we know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm, had no trouble getting their hands on a gun. At some point we will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other countries – it does not happen with this kind of frequency.”

“It is in our power to do something about it. It would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it and at some point it is going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it.”

SUSPECT IN #CharlestonChurchShooting caught in Shelby, NC. He’s believed to have killed 9 ppl last night at a church pic.twitter.com/EZOKHYjMcU

— Megan Rivers (@MegMRivers) June 18, 2015

The U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, said the Justice Department, “will now be looking at all of the facts, all of the motivations all the things that led this individual – if he is in fact the shooter – to commit this crime. And we will determine which is the best ways in which to prosecute the case.”

She said it was too soon to determine whether the case would be tried in a state or federal venue.

Richard Cohen of the Southern Povery Law Centre, an extremist monitoring organisation said; “A white man who admires apartheid walks into a black church and kills nine people.”

“It’s an obvious hate crime by someone who feels threatened by our country’s changing demographics and the increasing prominence of African Americans in public life.

“Since 2000, we’ve seen an increase in the number of hate groups in our country — groups that vilify others on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity.

“Though the numbers have gone down somewhat in the last two years, they are still at historically high levels. The increase has been driven by a backlash to the country’s increasing racial diversity, an increase symbolized, for many, by the presence of an African American in the White House.

“Since 9/11, our country has been fixated on the threat of Jihadi terrorism. But the horrific tragedy at the Emmanuel AME reminds us that the threat of homegrown domestic terrorism is very real.”