A survivor of the terrorist attack in Charleston-South Carolina (SC) which left nine African-Americans dead has said that the suspect-Dylan Roof revealed his motives before committing the atrocity.
The rawstory.com/ quoted the said survivor as saying that the suspect reloaded his gun five times during the massacre and offered a clear explanation to what is motivating him to carry out such a heinous crime.
“You rape our women and you are taking over our country and you have to go,” the survivor quoted the suspected terrorist as saying. In the end, the terrorist killed three men and six women at the historical black church of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (EAME).
The church Pastor-Rev. Clementa Pinckney was among the dead and his surviving cousin name withheld made this stunning revelation about the motives of the terrorist.
The pastor’s cousin also said the terrorist came into the church and sat next to Pinckney through the service and started shooting when the service came to an end.
The dailymail.co.uk/ also buttressed this testimony given by the survivor by quoting Roof’s friend as saying that ”He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race,’ adding that the friends were getting drunk on vodka. He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks. I said that’s not the way it should be. But he kept talking about it”.
In a photograph of Roof on Facebook also, he is seen glaring at the camera while displaying the flag of apartheid-era South Africa on his jacket. Another flag depicting that of white-rule in the former Rhodesia now called Zimbabwe is also seen.
Investigators initially released surveillance camera footages and said he was 5 feet 9 inches tall with light brown hair in a bowl cut. Police said he was wearing a distinctive sweatshirt and driving a vehicle with a distinctive license plate as well.
He was later captured in Shelby-North Carolina, after a massive manhunt. Authorities said he was arrested during a traffic stop after police were alerted some type of “suspicious activity”.
It is said the EAME Church has been at the center of tense race relations in SC for a long time. The Charleston city is known locally as ‘The Holy City’, due to its large number of churches and historical mix of immigrant ethnic groups that brought a variety of creeds to the city.
The state’s endorsement of the Confederacy and slavery ran deep in the 1800s and, in more recent decades, white support for so-called ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws kept black residents marginalized.
The state was also at the center of the civil rights movement in the 1960s with Martin Luther King being a visitor to the church.
The church was formed in 1816 when African-American members of the Methodist Episcopal Church broke away due to race segregation.
According to the US National Park Service, it is one of the largest and oldest black congregations in the South, and was founded in part by a freed slave who was later executed for organizing a revolt six years after being set up. One of the church founders was later implicated in a slave revolt plot, allowing the church to be burnt to the ground and was not until 1834 when it was rebuilt.
The congregation continued the tradition of the African church by worshipping underground until 1865 when it was formally reorganized and the name Emanuel was adopted meaning ‘God with us’.
he speaks the truth