|
 Officers with dogs searched the streets for the suspect, whom
police described as a 21-year-old white man with sandy blond hair,
after gunfire erupted inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday night, Police Chief
Gregory Mullen said.
The gunman had yet to be caught hours later and was considered
extremely dangerous, he said.
"To have an awful person come in and shoot them is inexplicable,
obviously the most intolerable and unbelievable act possible,"
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told reporters. "The only reason someone
could walk into a church to shoot people praying is out of hate."
The shooting recalled the 1963 bombing of an African-American church
in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four girls and galvanized the
civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The Charleston church is one of the largest and oldest black
congregations in the South, its website says. It has its roots in
the early 19th century, and was founded in part by a freed slave who
was later executed for organizing a revolt, according to the U.S.
National Park Service.
The attack follows the April shooting of an unarmed black man in
neighboring North Charleston by a white police officer. The officer
has been charged with murder in that case, one of a number of deaths
of unarmed black men in encounters with police that have raised
racial tensions in the United States.
The community reacted with shock and grief after Wednesday's
shooting.
"I'm heartbroken," said Shona Holmes, 28, a bystander at the
aftermath of the shooting. "It's just hurtful to think that someone
would come in and shoot people in a church. If you're not safe in
church, where are you safe?"
The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and
other agencies have joined in the investigation, Mullen said.
Eight victims were found dead in the church, Mullen told reporters,
and a ninth person died after being taken to hospital. One other
person was wounded and was being treated at a local hospital, Mullen
said, adding that there were other survivors.
None of the victims were immediately identified. But the Reverend Al
Sharpton, the New York-based civil rights leader, said in a tweet
that the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a
member of the state Senate, was among the dead.
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Early on Thursday morning, Mullen released photos taken from the
church of the suspect, as well as of a black sedan he was seen
leaving in. Mullen added there was "no reason to believe" that he
was not in the Charleston area.
President of the Charleston NAACP, Dot Scott, told the local Post
and Courier newspaper that a survivor told family members that the
gunman first sat in the church before rising and opening fire. The
shooter told her he would let her live so she could tell others what
had happened, according to Scott.
After the shooting, a bomb threat was reported near the church,
Charleston County Sheriff's Office spokesman Eric Watson said, and
people who were gathered in the area were told by police to move
back.
Mullen said that the all-clear had been given after checks following
the bomb threat.
A police chaplain was present at the scene of the shooting, and a
helicopter with a searchlight hovered overhead as officers combed
the area.
Following the attack on the church, Republican presidential
candidate Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, canceled an
appearance in Charleston that had been scheduled for Thursday
morning.
"Governor Bush's thoughts and prayers are with the individuals and
families affected by this tragedy," his campaign team said in a
statement.
(Additional reporting by Randall Hill in Charleston, S.C., Alex
Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco;
Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Hugh
Lawson)
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