21-year-old Dylan Roof was arrested yesterday afternoon in North Carolina, about 220 miles from the site of the shooting at a Charleston church that left nine people dead.
US officials referred to Roof’s actions as a “hate crime”. The shooting is the latest incident in a year of turmoil and racial tensions in the US, after several high-profile events of killings of unarmed black men by white police officers.
It is understood that Roof has now confessed to have carried out the shooting at the nearly 200-year old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Roof justified his actions by saying he “wished to incite a racial war in the United States.”