‘You hurt a lot of people, but … I forgive you’
Victims’ families plead for peace at hearing in Charleston shooting
CHARLESTON, S.C. — In an extraordinary display of grief and forgiveness, relatives of people killed in a shooting at a storied black church here addressed the suspect in court Friday, one after another offering an emotional mix of blessings and pleas for peace.
“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms,” Felicia Sanders told Dylann Roof, the suspect in a mass shooting that officials have called racially motivated. She was in the church when the gunman fatally shot nine people, including her son, Tywanza, and Sanders survived by pretending to be dead.
“You have killed some of the most beautiful people that I know,” she said. “Every fiber in my body hurts, and I’ll never be the same. Tywanza Sanders was my son, but Tywanza was my hero.”
But like some of the others, she added, “May God have mercy on you.”
Nadine Collier, the daughter of another victim, Ethel Lance, her voice choked with sobs, said: “I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people, but God forgive you, and I forgive you.”
Roof, 21, who is white, was charged Friday with nine counts of murder and one count of criminal possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. All of the victims in the shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were black.
Law enforcement officials said that after he was arrested Thursday, he said
he had just done something big in Charleston, and the .45-caliber pistol believed to have been used in the shooting was recovered from his car.
The Charleston Police Department had circulated images of a suspect, taken by a security camera at the church, and it was members of Roof’s own family who named him as the man in the pictures, according to the arrest warrant, which was released Friday.
“The father and uncle of the defendant contacted CPD and positively identified the defendant and his vehicle as those they saw in the photographs,” the warrant said, referring to the Charleston Police Department.
‘We have to forgive’
In Roof’s first, brief court hearing, Magistrate James B. Gosnell Jr. set bail at $1 million on the gun charge but explained that he did not have the authority to set bail on the murder charges, which would be handled by the state’s Circuit Court. The defendant watched impassively on a video link from a nearby jail, flanked by two guards, as the judge invited victims’ relatives to speak.
“I’m a work in progress, and I acknowledge that I’m very angry,” said Bethane Middleton-Brown, sister of one of the dead, the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor. “She taught me we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate. We have to forgive.”
Roof spoke only when questioned by the magistrate, confirming his address in the town of Eastover, giving his age and stating that he is unemployed.
A growing number of officials, including Gov. Nikki R. Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called the mass killing a hate crime, with the governor and others calling for the death penalty. It remained to be seen whether state or federal prosecutors would pursue hate crime charges.
“It’s certainly a hate crime,” Graham told WCBD, the local NBC television station, on Friday. “These people would not be dead today if they weren’t black.”
Law enforcement officials briefed on the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, said Roof told officers that he had committed some important act in Charleston. Officials have also said he hoped to start a race war.
Witnesses said the gunman walked into the church and joined a Bible study session, sitting next to the pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was also a state senator. First the gunman listened, witnesses said, then he argued, and eventually he began ranting against black people, and after nearly an hour there, he stood, drew a gun and fired, reloading as many as five times.
‘Racial terrorism’
He fatally shot six women and three men, ranging in age from 26 to 87. Among the dead was Pinckney.
“All victims were hit multiple times,” the arrest warrant says, and before leaving, the gunman stood over a witness “and uttered a racially inflammatory statement to the witness.”
“This was a racial hate crime and must be treated as such,” Cornell William Brooks, president of the NAACP, said Friday in Charleston, adding that investigators should be asking whether the gunman was part of a larger hate group. “This was an act of racial terrorism.”
Roof had an unsettled personal life — he had been arrested twice this year, and friends said he sometimes slept in his car — and a recent history of anti-black views. But law enforcement officials said he was not on their radar as someone who posed a serious threat of violence.
“This is an absolute hate crime,” Haley said on Friday on NBC’s “Today” show. “We absolutely will want him to have the death penalty. This is the worst hate that I’ve seen and that the country has seen in a long time.”
Greg Mullen, the chief of police in Charleston, also has called the shooting a hate crime, and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the Justice Department is investigating that possibility.
President Barack Obama on Friday reiterated his call for new gun controls, speaking at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in San Francisco, saying that a shift in public opinion was needed to force Congress to act.
“Every country has unstable, hateful people,” he said. “What’s different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns.”
Roof’s family released a statement Friday saying that “words cannot express our shock, grief, and disbelief as to what happened that night” but gave no insight into the defendant’s state of mind or racial views.