Dylann Roof (21) was arrested yesterday on suspicion of having fatally shot nine people at a historic African-American church in South Carolina on Wednesday.
Those who know him described a withdrawn, troubled young man.
Roof’s uncle recalled telling his sister, the suspect’s mother, several years ago that he was worried about Roof, and that the “quiet, soft-spoken boy” was too introverted.
“I said he was like 19 years old, he still didn’t have a job, a driver’s license or anything like that and he just stayed in his room a lot of the time,” Cowles said in a telephone interview.
Roof was charged in March with possession of illegal drugs or other controlled substances, according to court documents. A few weeks later he was arrested for trespassing. The drug charge was recorded as a first offence, but further details were not immediately available.
Cowles (56) said he recognised Roof in a photo released by police as they searched for him in the hours after the massacre. Roof’s father gave him a .45-caliber pistol for his birthday this year, Cowles said.
Shooting practice
“I actually talked to him on the phone briefly for just a few moments and he was saying ‘Well I’m outside target practicing with my new gun’,” Cowles said, describing a phone call around the time of Roof’s birthday in April.
“Nobody in my family had seen anything like this coming,” Cowles said shortly before news of Roof’s arrest. “I said, if it is him, and when they catch him, he’s got to pay for this.”
A Facebook profile apparently belonging to Roof was created earlier this year. The only public photograph on the page is a blurry snap of him in front of winter-bare trees, looking glumly at the camera, bowl-cut hair falling over his forehead.
In the picture, he wears a black jacket that prominently features the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, from when the two African countries were ruled by a white minority.
A woman who answered the cellphone of the suspect’s mother Amelia Roof, also known as Amy, declined to comment on Thursday morning. “We will be doing no interviews ever,” she said, before hanging up.
Roof grew up shuttling between his parents’ homes in South Carolina, according to his uncle. His father, Ben Roof, runs his own construction business, and he remarried after divorcing Dylann Roof’s mother.
Roof and his older sister, Amber, lived part of the time with their father and the father’s wife, Paige, until Ben and Paige divorced.
Amber Roof (27) is engaged to be married and a profile on TheKnot.com shows her wedding is scheduled for Sunday in Lexington, South Carolina. – Reuters