Go to ‘pit of hell’
Church massacre survivor faces fiend at trial
A SURVIVOR Dylann Roof’s racist rampage through a black South Carolina church says the death penalty isn’t enough punishment for him.
“There is no place for him except in the pit of hell,” Felicia Sanders testified through tears Wednesday in a federal courtroom, where the sound of sobs hung in the air. “Evil, evil, evil as can be.”
Sanders, in chilling detail, recalled watching the white gunman coldly execute her son Tywanza, her 87-yearold aunt and seven other unarmed blacks in a fusillade of more than 60 bullets.
“I watched my son come into this world,” testified Sanders, the first witness in the federal death penalty trial. “And I watched my son of leave this world . . . I watched him take his last breath.”
Judge Richard Gergel called for a recess as Sanders became overwhelmed in reliving the gruesome killing spree of June 17, 2015, inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Roof entered the church during a Bible study class and took a seat alongside the church’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, joining other parishioners, recalled Sanders.
She recounted how Roof pulled his Glock .45-caliber pistol and opened fire once the class ended, spewing racial slurs as he squeezed off dozens of shots.
“We stood up, shut our eyes to say a prayer,” Sanders testified as her voice trailed off.
Sanders — inside the Charleston courthouse just a mile from the church — recalled cowering beneath a table with her 12-year-old granddaughter, urging the child to play dead.
Roof, clad in a gray and white striped prison jumpsuit, refused to look at the witness. She recalled how Roof told her 26-year-old son that he “had to do this” before shooting the victim five times.
Defense attorney David Bruck, after conceding his client’s guilt during his opening statement, declined to crossexamine Sanders.
“There is not any real dispute about the evidence at this point,” Bruck told the racially mixed jury. “We don’t disagree with any of this.”
He instead focused on Roof’s past and the possible reasons behind the rampage, raising issues likely to emerge during the death penalty phase.
Roof has said he intends to represent himself in the penalty phase.