Charleston shooter charged with additional murder counts

Roof reportedly entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church the evening of June 17 and opened fire, killing nine black people.

Roof was arrested the day after the shooting more than 200 miles away in North Carolina and then flown back to Charleston.

The man accused of killing nine people attending Bible study at a historic black church in Charleston has been indicted on three new charges of attempted murder, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Roof, who was known to have racist and white supremacist beliefs, according to Gawker, allegedly wanted to start a race war.

“The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case.”

“Roof, his scrawny arms sometimes poking out of a Gold’s Gym singlet, other times wearing a shirt emblazoned with “88” (a popular number among neo-Nazi’s since “h” is the eighth letter of the alphabet – code for “Heil Hitler”) and at others wearing his jacket with the flags of apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa, appears to have been touring sites connected to slavery and the Confederacy”.

KCCI reported that the charges were handed down by a South Carolina prosecutor.

A grand jury has indicted Roof on all the murder and attempted murder charges, as well as one count of possession a weapon during a violent crime, Wilson said.

The shooting, and Roof’s fondness for the Confederate flag, sparked a push to remove a Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state Capitol. These Attempted Murder charges are related to the victims who survived their attack at Mother Emanuel.

Wilson has not spoken publicly about what punishment she believes Roof should receive if convicted, insisting that she wants to discuss the issue with victims’ families before making a decision on whether or not to seek the death penalty against Roof. Officials say Roof is now being held without bond on the murder charges while the Justice Department is looking at the case as a possible hate crime.

[Image courtesy of Getty Images/Pool].