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 Dylann Roof, 21, who authorities say spent an hour in Bible study
with parishioners at the nearly 200-year-old Emanuel African
Methodist Church in Charleston before opening fire on them, appeared
via video feed before Chief Magistrate James Gosnell who ordered him
held without bond.
Dressed in a black-and-white prison uniform and flanked by two
guards in body armor, Roof exhibited no visible emotion during the
proceedings, even as he was addressed by loved ones of the victims.
He was formally charged with nine counts of murder and a weapons
offense.
"May God have mercy on your soul," said Felicia Sanders, whose
26-year-old son, Tywanza Sanders, was the youngest person to die in
Wednesday's rampage. "You have killed some of the most beautiful
people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts."
Felicia Sanders was said by a family friend interviewed by CNN to
have survived the shooting rampage by lying on the floor and playing
dead as she cradled another survivor, her 5-year-old granddaughter,
while her son's blood soaked her clothes.
 According to friends and family, Tywanza Sanders pleaded with the
gunman as he paused to reload his weapon, saying, "You don't have to
do this," to which the suspect replied: "No, you've raped our women
and taken our country. I've got to do what I've got to do."
Roof stared blankly, and glanced downward occasionally, as Sanders
and four other family members of the gunshot victims spoke of how he
had been welcomed into to the church by the nine people he has been
charged with slaying.
The attack at the church nicknamed "Mother Emanuel" for its key role
in African-American history followed a wave of protests across the
United States in recent months over police killings and excessive
force against unarmed black men, focusing attention on race
relations and bias in the criminal justice system.
Gosnell himself was reprimanded by the state Supreme Court for
misconduct in 2005 in two cases, one in which he used a racial slur
during a bond-reduction hearing for a black defendant, according to
a copy of the rebuke posted online.
The magistrate also drew sharp criticism from some observers of
Friday's hearing after saying Roof's family members were "victims"
too.
The bloodshed in Charleston, where residents packed an arena for a
prayer vigil late Friday, marked the latest in a series of fatal
U.S. mass shootings. The violence has renewed a national debate
between advocates of tighter controls on gun possession and
supporters of unfettered access to firearms they assert is
constitutionally protected under the Second Amendment.
"The elephant in the room is guns. South Carolina and the country
have gone gun-crazy," said state Representative Wendell Gilliard, a
Democrat who represents Charleston. "How many times do we need to
come together? How many times do we need to unite?"
President Barack Obama, addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors in
San Francisco, said the latest shooting exposed the "blight" of
racism still present in America, and he railed against critics who
have accused him of politicizing a tragedy to talk about tougher gun
laws.
 "You don't see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of
frequency, in any other advanced nation on Earth," he said. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the attack as both a
hate crime and potential act of terrorism, spokeswoman Emily Pierce
said on Friday.
'NO ROOM FOR HATING'
Roof said little during his initial court appearance, except to
answer, "Yes, sir," or "No, sir" in response to questions from the
judge, and to give his age.
The victims' family members filed into the courthouse in twos and
threes before Roof's appearance, appearing composed as they stared
into the video monitor at the defendant, who was arrested without
incident in Shelby, North Carolina, on Thursday after 14 hours at
large.
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In addition to Tywanza Sanders, the massacre's victims included
Democratic state Senator Clementa Pinckney, 41; DePayne Middleton
Doctor, 49; Sharonda Coleman Singleton, 45; Cynthia Hurd, 54; Susie
Jackson, 87; Ethel Lance, 70; Myra Thompson 59, and Daniel Simmons,
74.
Roof could be sentenced to death if he convicted, and South Carolina
Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, urged prosecutors to seek
capital punishment.
Still, family members offered words of mercy during the brief court
appearance.
"I will never talk to her ever again. I will never ever hold her
again," said Lance's daughter, Nadine Collier, who went on to tell
Roof, "You hurt a lot of people, but God forgives you and I forgive
you."
The defendant's relatives, in their first public comment since the
shooting, issued a statement through Roof's lawyer offering their
"deepest sympathies and condolences" to the victims' families.
"Words cannot express our shock, grief and disbelief as to what
happened that night. We are devastated and saddened by what
occurred," the statement said.
The racially charged nature of the shooting has had a special
resonance in Charleston, once one of the largest ports for the U.S.
slave trade and the site of the first shots fired during the
American Civil War, at the battle of Fort Sumter, a Union garrison
in Charleston Harbor.
"This was not merely a mass shooting, not merely a matter of gun
violence, this was a racial hate crime and must be confronted as
such," said Cornell William Brooks, president of the NAACP. The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was
founded in 1909 to confront lynchings in the United States.
Brooks expressed anger that the South Carolina capitol continued to
fly the Confederate battle flag, a symbol of the pro-slavery South
during the U.S. Civil War, and called for it to be removed.
On Friday night, hundreds of mourners filled an indoor arena on the
campus of the College of Charleston in a prayer vigil for the
shooting victims. At one point, at the behest of the choir director,
the racially mixed crowd rose to sing two hymns.
Earlier in the day, passersby continued to flock to the AME church
that remained a crime scene, many struggling to understand what
motivated the attack.
The AME church was founded in the early 19th century by black
worshippers who were limited in how they could practice their faith
at white-dominated churches. The church was rebuilt after being
burned down in the late 1820s when one of its founders drafted plans
for a slave revolt.
"I grew up when racism was just a way of life," said Mary Meynardie,
90, who is white, as she stopped by the police tape that still
surrounded the church. "I wouldn't have been surprised if it was
somebody 60, 70 years old who had that much hate, but where does
this hate come from?"
(Additional reporting by Luciana Lopez and Brian Snyder in
Charleston, South Carolina; Katie Reilly, Lena Masri, Edward Krudy
and Laila Kearney in New York; Lindsay Dunsmir in Washington and
Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Writing by Scott Malone and Steve
Gorman; Editing by James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker)
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