Suspected Charleston gunman's family shocked, angry
A day after nine people were shot and killed at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, relatives and neighbors of the suspected gunman expressed anger and confusion.
Dylann Roof allegedly opened fire during a prayer meeting Wednesday night at the Emanuel AME Church, leaving nine people dead and three others wounded. The 21-year-old man was arrested Thursday morning in Shelby, North Carolina, and returned to Charleston to be prosecuted.
The Department of Justice is investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime. The suspect is white; all of his victims were black.
"How does my family escape this?" Carson Cowles, who identified himself as Roof's uncle, told CBS affiliate WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. With tears in his eyes, Cowles said Roof's family had no advance warning that he was capable of such violence.
At one point in the interview, Cowles became angry and said that if his nephew is guilty, he hopes he gets what is coming, according to WBTV.
"I'd be the executioner myself if they would allow it," Cowles told the Washington Post.
Roof's booking sheet for a February drug charge listed his address as a home in Eastover, South Carolina, near the state capital, Columbia. Neighbors told WBTV he lived there off and on with his mother.
"I listen, I look, I take mental pictures of people in the neighborhood and I have seen the kid and he really seemed harmless," Debra Scott told WBTV. She said she was disturbed because hers is the only African American family living near the property.
"That was my only concern about that -- whether we were safe as being right next door to him," Scott said. "It is really scary and I just pray for the family that, you know, that everything will go fine with them and that the kid will get help, they will get help.
"I know they're hurting as a family, because it would be hurting me too if it was my child."