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Nine Killed in Shooting at historic church in Charleston


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CHARLESTON, S.C. — A white gunman opened fire Wednesday night at a historic black church in downtown Charleston, S.C., killing nine people before fleeing and setting off an overnight manhunt, the police said.

 

At a news conference with Charleston’s mayor early Thursday, the police chief, Greg Mullen, called the shooting a hate crime.

 

“It is unfathomable that somebody in today’s society would walk into a church while they are having a prayer meeting and take their lives,” he said.

 

The police said the gunman walked into the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church around 9 p.m. and began shooting.

Eight people died at the scene, Chief Mullen said. Two people were taken to the Medical University of South Carolina, and one of them died on the way.

 

“Obviously, this is the worst night of my career,” Chief Mullen said. “This is clearly a tragedy in the city of Charleston.”

City officials did not release information about the victims and did not say how many people were in the church during the shooting. Hospital officials declined to comment.

 

Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said the city was offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the gunman, whom the police described as a clean-shaven white man about 21 years old who was wearing a gray sweatshirt, bluejeans and Timberland boots. Chief Mullen described him as “extremely dangerous.”

 

“To walk into a church and shoot someone, is out of pure hatred,” the mayor said as he walked away after the news conference.

Law enforcement officers from the F.B.I.; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division; and other agencies were assisting. Chief Mullen said the police were tracking the gunman with police dogs.

 

Around 10:45 p.m., police officers escorted a man in handcuffs who appeared to match the attacker’s description. But officials said later that they were still searching for the gunman.

In the first hours after the shooting, the police blocked reporters and passers-by from approaching the church, opposite a Marriott Courtyard hotel, because of a bomb threat. Many among the cluster of media workers were political reporters in town to cover campaign events of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush.

 

Helicopters with searchlights circled overhead, and a group of pastors knelt and prayed across the street.

“The question is, ‘Why God?’,” a man wearing a shirt bearing the name of the Empowerment Missionary Baptist Church said during the prayer.

 

Later, a group of church leaders gathered at the corner of Calhoun and King Streets, a few blocks from where the shooting occurred, and held an impromptu news conference. Tory Fields, a member of the Charleston County Ministers Conference, said he believed the suspect had targeted the victims because of their race.

 

“It’s obvious that it’s race,” he said. “What else could it be? You’ve got a white guy going into an African-American church. That’s choice. He chose to go into that church and harm those people. That’s choice.”

The church is one of the nation’s oldest black churches. The pastor, the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, is a state senator. It was not clear whether he was at the church at the time of the shooting.

 

The Gothic Revival church was built in 1891 and is considered a historically significant building, according to the National Park Service.

The congregation was formed by black members of Charleston’s Methodist Episcopal Church who broke away “over disputed burial ground,” according to the website of the National Park Service.

 

In 1822, one of the church’s co-founders, Denmark Vesey, tried to foment a slave rebellion in Charleston, the church’s website says. The plot was foiled by the authorities and 35 people were executed, including Mr. Vesey.

 

The church houses the oldest black congregation south of Baltimore, the Park Service said.

Gov. Nikki R. Haley said in a statement that she and her family were praying for the victims.

“While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” the governor said. “Please join us in lifting up the victims and their families with our love and prayers.”

 

Source

 

There was just a press conference a little while ago where authorities believe this was a hate crime. Usually in situations like this I keep my thoughts to myself, but it's a really disgusting feeling knowing that this stuff still happens in this day and age.

 

As a Hispanic person here in the States, I have unfortunately experienced the taste of racism and violent ways of others. Saying that, it's really hard to put into words at the anguish that one feels when these tragedies happen. That despite the advancements society has made, this hatred that people have doesn't go away because people refuse to listen to reason. That racism and violence are not these things that went away and only happen on TV in places far away from home. They're here with us, but some people seem to turn a blind eye to it.

 

My heart is with the people of Charleston and I really hope they catch this guy that did this.

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Well, this is what a domestic terrorist looks like.

 

Sadly, he won't be called that because he's a white male in his 20s.

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This is fucked up beyond belief. I can only hope the cops gun this guy down like the animal he is.

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That is detestable. The idea that this psycho decided to kill these people because of their race is horrible.

I hope the man who took these innocent lives will be put behind bars soon, he deserves it.

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I'm curious to what set this guy off.

Though the likely answer here is that he was merely racist, having a bad day, and had quite some mental instability.

 

Hopefully, they can find him soon and put him behind bars.

 

Sadly, he won't be called that because he's a white male in his 20s.

 

What the fuck.

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He'll probably be put in jail for a net-very-long time and let go.

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A lot of people were saying that if he was black, he'd probably have been shot instead of detained, I don't follow news of this nature quite enough to know whether this would be true or not. Thoughts?

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^ There's different, unwritten standards of media reporting in America where white perpetrators of heinous crimes are not talked about in the same way that minority ones are.

Even with this being classed as a hate crime (so now we don't have to have that song-and-dance), I expect a hearty round of beating around the bush and trying to understand his mental faculties instead of simply assassinating his character and calling him a thug, animal, monster, or terrorist. Another thing you definitely won't see is conservative pundits wondering when "leaders of the white community" are going to address the "pathologies" rampant in their communities that allow these mass shootings to keep happening (something black people and Muslims hear a lot).

Remember when people talk about the racial element that will be in play in reporting we are, after all, the country that glamourized the Boston Bomber on the front of the Rolling Stones magazine, and simultaneously called a black female sorority doing good work at a church during the riots "gang members."

Ultimately though, I hope this racist piece of shit is caught and raked over the coals in the justice system. Don't want him killed in the field without being made a legal example of.

 

Pretty much this. The media's portrayal of both criminals and victims varies wildly based on race. The media will avoid labeling actual domestic terrorists as such because they're not Muslim, and they will, in the same breath, proceed to try and practically justify a completely unnecessary police shooting because the victim was black.

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A lot of people were saying that if he was black, he'd probably have been shot instead of detained, I don't follow news of this nature quite enough to know whether this would be true or not. Thoughts?

Considering the police have shot unarmed black people in the news? That doesn't need much to see that he'd be hunted down and shots would immediately be fired back if he were black.

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Isn't this all kind of irrelevant though? I mean, true or not, can we refrain from the race baiting for a bit? Pretty please? I would think it'd be more important to find out why it is this guy went on a shooting spree, instead of just point blank assuming that he did it because he was white. I mean, isn't that rather racist in and of itself?

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Just to explain this to you calmly, the fact that it is a white man going into a historic black church with the intent to kill is fully relevant in relation to the past several months of police brutality that exploded in Ferguson, Missouri due to a growing idea that these people had it coming due to being black. 

 

The KKK have been around commentating on all of the last several months. There's been a growing movement in Old White America that has been upholding the cops' rights to police brutality on blacks using excuses like "black on black crime" and to idealize their own right to riot since these "savages" are doing it. It kind of is relevant. 

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It's not race-baiting to point out how centuries of domestic terrorism by whites against blacks in America plays a role in the dynamics of interracial violence and the treatment of victims and perpetrators by the public and media depending upon the race of each.

It's also not race-baiting to say that a white individual seen in his Facebook profile wearing a jacket supporting South African apartheid, being on record for stating that black people "rape their [white people's] women" and thus need to go, carrying out a targeted shooting on a historically black church, and has had law officials already proclaim that this is a hate crime, is a racist-ass motherfucker.

But by all means, choose this obvious hill to die on concerning downplaying racism in light of the tired-ass mental illness deflection, the very deflection I called out in my first post.

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Isn't this all kind of irrelevant though? I mean, true or not, can we refrain from the race baiting for a bit? Pretty please? I would think it'd be more important to find out why it is this guy went on a shooting spree, instead of just point blank assuming that he did it because he was white. I mean, isn't that rather racist in and of itself?

How is it race baiting though? Guy that dresses with clothes that carry the symbols of old racist, white-minority regimes in southern Africa goes into a historic black church. Before shooting the people there he yells racial epithets to them. Authorities call this a hate crime.

I honestly don't know how someone can say we don't know the reason why this guy shot up the place and that we're being racist to him.

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I didn't read the full article. My apologies. I just thought that people were jumping to conclusions again, and in that I was doing the same myself.

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You literally are downplaying everything. Your posts operate on the assumption that societal and institutional racism aren't things, that everyone in America operates on an even playing field, and that people of color operate on assumptions about the society they exist in as a way to be racist versus a means of assuring their survival.

The assumption that a white man would attack a black church due in some part to racism isn't a racist assumption. It's a consideration mired in the fact that this country has a history seeped in racially-motivated bombings and shootings of black spaces like churches, community centers, and homes of activists and their groups. It's recognition of the facts of our history and the truths of our continued inequality, not a condemnation of every white person.

But this is all irrelevant to the fact that this has actually been classed as a hate crime by law enforcement, long before the topic was even made. So what the fuck are you even bitching about that doesn't stem from your feelings being hurt?

EDIT: I saw your post change. Despite your retraction, my overall points still stand. Connecting the motivations of your attacker to the general operation of your country's racial politics and inequalities isn't racist. No one is saying every white person is a card-carrying KKK member.

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EDIT: I saw your post change. Despite your retraction, my overall points still stand. Connecting the motivations of your attacker to the general operation of your country's racial politics and inequalities isn't racist. No one is saying every white person is a card-carrying KKK member.

 

It sometimes feels like that. I'm speaking from my personal life experiences as well.

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Your feelings as a white person taking part in this discussion do not matter to the reality that is black people having been railroaded, tortured, killed for hundreds of years in the name of subjugation and oppression. Full stop, your frustration is less important than the racist factors that have led to nine innocent families needing to plan funerals for no reason. If it bothers you, either you fall into the people I'm talking about and are actually racist, at which point I care even less, or you don't and you're getting worked up needlessly because you're not used to your culture getting called out. Either way, I'm not going to stop expressing my sentiments about the awful race relations in this country because its hurting your feelings. I don't like babysitting.

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Well, this is what a domestic terrorist looks like.

 

Sadly, he won't be called that because he's a white male in his 20s.

Pretty much this. The media's portrayal of both criminals and victims varies wildly based on race. The media will avoid labeling actual domestic terrorists as such because they're not Muslim, and they will, in the same breath, proceed to try and practically justify a completely unnecessary police shooting because the victim was black.

The reason most times that some white college kid shoots up a school or whatever aren't treated as domestic terrorism is because they aren't actually domestic terrorism. That temple shooting from a few years back was done by a racist white neo-nazi against those scary Middle Eastern people certain parts of the media talk about, and that was absolutely treated as a domestic terrorism even though the guy offed himself. The Aurora Colorado shooting of the same year wasn't treated as domestic terrorism because he was shooting random people for pretty much no reason than because he wanted to. The 2009 Fort Hood shooting was done by a known Islamic extremist who later admitted in court that he was literally pro-Taliban, and even then the federal government couldn't justify labeling the incident as domestic terrorism because they couldn't find a specific motive for why he did it.

 

 

 

This is already being spread by the media as a hate crime. The guy's history as a white supremacist is already public knowledge. You're kidding yourself if you don't think the media will spend the entirety of the investigation and his eventual trial publicizing his political views. No amount of "The South Will Rise Again" sentiment in the region will tolerate a person shooting up a church as if he was just a poor misguided soul.

 

A lot of people were saying that if he was black, he'd probably have been shot instead of detained, I don't follow news of this nature quite enough to know whether this would be true or not. Thoughts?

A lot of people are full of shit. They don't not shoot white people coming off of shooting sprees just because they are white. They don't automatically plug black people who are under a federal manhunt being led by the FBI just because they are black.

 

 

This particular guy was detained because he willingly allowed himself to be arrested after they caught up to him. The reason most perpetrators of mass shootings aren't detained is because they either shoot themselves in the face as soon as police arrive, or get in protracted gun battles that they rarely live through anyway.

 

 

He'll probably be put in jail for a net-very-long time and let go.

South Carolina has the death penalty. Depending on how the case plays out, it may very well fall under federal jurisdiction (though I personally doubt it, since even with the Boston Marathon bombing they had to stretch the truth a bit to take over the case).

 

 

There is little reason to believe that he won't fry.

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There is little reason to believe that he won't fry.

 

Well, he'll be put on Death Row. He'll likely die of old age before it actually happens though.

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He's in his 20's I believe. Is there a precedent of appeals lasting so long in such a clear-cut case that young Death Row inmates die before being killed?

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Nothing at all like in California, where death row essentially meant that they threw you in solitary and refused to actually give you an appeals process in the hope that you eventually just die anyway. From what I found poking around, South Carolina (and I say this with a bit of surprise, honestly) actually seems to extend death row time served for reasons other than just because it deliberately doesn't want to deal with death row inmates.

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He's in his 20's I believe. Is there a precedent of appeals lasting so long in such a clear-cut case that young Death Row inmates die before being killed?

 

No, but there's a precedent of me being cynical and pessimistic.

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He's in his 20's I believe. Is there a precedent of appeals lasting so long in such a clear-cut case that young Death Row inmates die before being killed?

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I really would like for this bastard to pay for what he's done. Killing out of hatred for a race is seriously fucked up.

 

Sadly, I don't have enough faith in the legal system to believe his punishment will be proportionate to what he did.

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