Death penalty wanted for 22-year-old Dylann Roof

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for a white man accused of killing nine black parishioners in a racially motivated attack at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, last June, the US Justice Department said.

“The nature of the alleged crime and the resulting harm compelled this decision,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement.

Dylann Roof, 22, is accused of opening fire on June 17, 2015, during Bible study at Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in a massacre that shook the country and intensified debate over US race relations.