Shooter’s friend gets 27 months for lying to FBI

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The only person with whom Dylann Roof shared his racist plot to massacre parishioners at a historic black church was sentenced Tuesday to more than two years in prison for hampering the investigation and lying to the FBI.

“I’m really, really sorry. A lot of beautiful lives were taken,” 22-year-old Joey Meek told the court. He began to cry as he added: “I don’t know if I’ll make it out of prison alive. I’m scared.”

Meek was handed 27 months behind bars by the same federal judge who presided over Roof ’s trial, which ended in January with the avowed white supremacist being sentenced to death for slaughtering nine people at Charleston’s Emanuel AME church.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel said he hoped the sentence would serve as a deterrent to anyone else who learns of something so serious and fails to come forward. He added that Meek was fortunate another massacre didn’t occur because of the delay in identifying Roof in the hours after the attack.

Meek,22, said Roof shared his murderous plan during a night at Meek’s house as they drank vodka, snorted cocaine, smoked marijuana and played video games. Authorities said that was about a week before the June 17, 2015, killings.

Meek later struck a deal with prosecutors, agreeing to plead guilty to failure to report a crime and lying to authorities.

He was not sentenced for failing to go to the police before the attack. Instead, authorities said, Meek broke the law when he stopped a friend in the hours immediately after the attack from calling the police to report Roof as a suspect.

Also, authorities said Meek lied to the FBI when he initially denied Roof had shared his plan with him.