Friend who took in church gunman arrested by FBI
Joey Meek, the friend who gave a home to Dylann Roof in the weeks before the Charleston, South Carolina church shooting, was arrested by the FBI yesterday, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
Meek is expected to be arraigned early today in Columbia, the state capital.
According to a letter Meek received in August from the United States Attorney’s Office in Columbia, he is under investigation in connection with the church shooting.
The letter mentioned the two possible charges: making false statements to federal officials, and ‘‘misprision of a felony’’, a charge meaning he concealed knowledge of a crime.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Meek’s girlfriend Lindsey Fry said Meek was picked up at work, but she did not know what the charge or charges were.
‘‘He don’t think he did anything wrong,’’ Fry said. ‘‘I don’t really have anything to say about it. I mean, we knew it was going to happen, but we don’t understand why it was happening.’’
In the weeks before Roof allegedly gunned down black worshippers inside Emanuel AME Church, he slept on the floor of a Lexington County trailer that also housed Meek, 21. Meek’s two brothers and mother and Fry also live in the trailer.
The shooting in June sparked a massive manhunt for the gunman.
Meek told The Washington Post that he feared Roof was the suspect when news of the shooting first broke, and that he called police once he saw the surveillance footage on television the following morning. FBI agents subsequently questioned him about what Roof had told him, and his own possible involvement. Fry was also questioned.
Meek was a childhood friend of Roof’s who had asked for a place to stay. In the days before the shooting, Roof said he was going to ‘‘do something crazy,’’ Meek told the Post, so Fry and Meek hid his gun.
They later returned it, believing it was a drunken episode. ‘‘I didn’t take him seriously,’’ Meek told the Post.
An FBI spokeswoman in Columbia didn’t immediately return a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the US Justice Department declined to comment.
Washington Post