South Carolina governor wants death penalty for Charleston church gunman

A gunman who killed nine people during a shooting spree at a Charleston church should get the death penalty, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has said.

This came after an acquaintance of the 21-year-old suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, said he had complained that “blacks were taking over the world”.

Joey Meek, a former friend who reconnected with Roof a few weeks ago, said that the suspect declared during a drinking session that “someone needed to do something about it for the white race”.

Roof is accused of the shooting during a Bible study class at The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. The victims included a state senator who was also the church’s minister.

Mr Meek called the FBI after recognising Roof in the video, down to the stained sweatshirt he wore while playing videogames in Mr Meek’s home the morning of the attack.

“I knew it was him,” Mr Meek told reporters.

During their reunion a few weeks ago, Roof said he had bought a .45-calibre Glock pistol and that he had “a plan”, Mr Meek said.

Mr Meek said this scared him enough that he took the gun out of Roof’s car and hid it in his house until the next day.

US president Barack Obama called the tragedy yet another example of damage caused by guns in America.

Police captured Roof in North Carolina after a motorist spotted him at a traffic light on her way to work. Roof was back in Charleston on Thursday night with a bond hearing pending, authorities said.

Charleston officials announced a prayer vigil for Friday evening. The city’s mayor described the shooting at the church as an act of “pure, pure concentrated evil”.

Others bemoaned the loss to a church that has served as a bastion of black pride for 200 years, despite efforts by white supremacists to wipe it out.

Surveillance video showed the gunman entering the church, without appearing threatening, Charleston County coroner Rae Wilson said.

“The suspect entered the group and was accepted by them, as they believed that he wanted to join them in this Bible study,” she said.

Then, “he became very aggressive and violent”.

On his Facebook page, Roof displayed the flags of defeated white-ruled regimes, posing with a Confederate flags plate on his car and wearing a jacket with stitched-on flag patches from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, which is now black-led Zimbabwe.

It is not clear whether Roof had any connection to the 16 white supremacist organisations operating in South Carolina.

His police record includes minor drug and trespassing charges.

Spilling blood inside a black church – especially “Mother Emanuel,” founded in 1816 – evoked painful memories across the US, a reminder that black churches have often been the targets of racist violence.