USA-SHOOTING/SOUTH CAROLINA-REAX Charleston residents show outpouring of support at church of deadly shooting

Record ID: 151731

  • Title: USA-SHOOTING/SOUTH CAROLINA-REAX Charleston residents show outpouring of support at church of deadly shooting
  • Date: 19th June 2015
  • Summary: CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES (JUNE 18, 2015) (REUTERS) CHURCH EXTERIOR VARIOUS OF FLOWERS AND CANDLES LAWANDA AND JOSEPH GREY LAYING FLOWERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) LAWANDA GREY, CHARLESTON RESIDENT, SAYING: "My heart just goes out the families. All my prayers go out to the families. My prayers go out to everyone for us to come together, be stronger, and to love
  • Embargoed: 4th July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA5F9PUGZ9V8OZXWGM5FDCD6DWS
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Mourners overflowed onto the streets in front of a historic African-American church in South Carolina on Thursday (June 18) a day after nine black people were shot dead during a Bible study.
    Residents placed candles outside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, next to a growing memorial of flowers, plush toys, balloons and placards.
    The mass shooting set off an intense 14-hour manhunt that ended with 21-year-old Dylann Roof arrested in a traffic stop in a small North Carolina town, 220 miles (350 km) north of Charleston, where the church rampage occurred, officials said.
    Four pastors, including Democratic state Senator Clementa Pinckney, 41, were among the six women and three men shot dead at the church nicknamed "Mother Emanuel," which was burned to the ground in the late 1820s after a slave revolt led by one of its founders and was later rebuilt.
    Lawanda Grey and her husband Joseph, a U.S. Army veteran, brought more flowers to the vigil.
    "My heart just goes out the families. All my prayers go out to the families. My prayers go out to everyone for us to come together, be stronger, and to love one another, all the same," Lawanda Grey said.
    Billie Jean Singleton, a grandmother from Charleston, said the shock has yet to disappear.
    "It's like unbelievable. We couldn't believe it. You're at church serving God and for something like this to happen, it's just unbelievable," said Singleton, who knew several of the victims.
    The suspect, Roof, who received a gun for a 21st birthday present in April and whose social media profile suggests a fascination with white supremacy, waived his right to extradition and was flown back to South Carolina hours after his arrest.
    He is due for a bail hearing on Friday but will appear by video link from the Charleston-area detention center where he was jailed, said Major Eric Watson, a Charleston County Sheriff's Office spokesman.
    Wednesday's (June 17) gun violence at the nearly 200-year-old church caps a year of turmoil and protests over race relations, law enforcement and criminal justice in the United States, stemming from a string of police slayings of unarmed black men.
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