Dylann Roof

Dylann Roof
Mugshot of Roof taken by the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, June 18, 2015
Born	Dylann Storm Roof (1994-04-03) April 3, 1994 (age 30) Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.
Known for	Perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting
Criminal status	Incarcerated
Motive	White supremacy/nationalism Far-right extremism neo-Nazism Desire to start a race war Anti-black racism Belief in the white genocide conspiracy theory
Conviction(s)	Federal Hate crimes resulting in death (18 U.S.C. § 249) (9 counts) Hate crimes involving an intent to kill (18 U.S.C. § 249) (3 counts) Obstruction of religious exercise resulting in death (18 U.S.C. § 247) (9 counts) Obstruction of religious exercise involving an intent to kill using a weapon (18 U.S.C. § 247) (3 counts) Use of a firearm during a crime of violence resulting in death (18 U.S.C. § 924) (9 counts) South Carolina Murder (9 counts) Attempted murder (3 counts) Possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime
Criminal penalty	Federal Death South Carolina 9 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus 95 years
Details
Date	June 17, 2015 c. 9:05 p.m. – c.  9:11 p.m.
Location(s)	Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
Target(s)	African-American churchgoers
Killed	9
Injured	1
Weapons	Glock 41 .45-caliber handgun
Imprisoned at	USP Terre Haute

Dylann Storm Roof^[1] (born April 3, 1994) is an American white supremacist, Neo-Nazi, and mass murderer who is currently awaiting execution on death row at USP Terre Haute for perpetrating the Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015, in the U.S. state of South Carolina.^[2][3] During a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof killed nine people, all African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injured a tenth person. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.^[4] Roof's actions in Charleston have been widely described as domestic terrorism.^[5]

Three days after the shooting, a website titled The Last Rhodesian was discovered and later confirmed by officials to be owned by Roof. The website contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, along with a manifesto in which he outlined his views toward Black people, among other groups.^[6][7] He also claimed in the manifesto to have developed his white supremacist views after reading about the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin and Black-on-white crime.

On December 15, 2016, Roof was convicted in federal court of all 33 federal charges (including hate crimes) against him stemming from the shooting; on January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death for those crimes.^[8] On March 31, 2017, Roof agreed to plead guilty in South Carolina state court to all state charges pending against him—nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony—to avoid a second death sentence. In return, he accepted a sentence of life in prison without parole.^[9] On April 10, 2017, Roof was sentenced to nine consecutive sentences of life without parole after formally pleading guilty to state murder charges.^{[10][11][12][13]}