Dylann Roof
Dylann Storm Roof [1] (born April Three, 1994) is an American white supremacist and mass murderer convicted of perpetrating the Charleston church shooting. [Two] [Trio]
( 1994-04-03 ) April Three, one thousand nine hundred ninety four (age 23)
Federal (33 counts):
- Hate crime act resulting in death (9 counts)
- Hate crime act involving an attempt to kill (Three counts)
- Obstruction of exercise of religion resulting in death (9 counts)
- Obstruction of exercise of religion involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon (Three counts)
- Use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence (9 counts)
South Carolina State (13 counts):
- Murder (9 counts)
- Attempted murder (Three counts)
- Possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime
April Ten, two thousand seventeen (state; agreed to plead guilty on March 31, 2017)
During a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof killed nine people, all African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injured one other person. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the centre of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.
Three days after the shooting, a website titled The Last Rhodesian was discovered and later confirmed by officials to be wielded by Roof. The website contained photos of Roof posing with symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, along with a manifesto in which he outlined his views toward blacks, among other peoples. He also claimed in the manifesto to have developed his white supremacist views after reading about the two thousand twelve shooting of Trayvon Martin and “black-on-white crime.”
In December 2016, Roof was convicted in federal court of all thirty three federal hate crime charges against him stemming from the shooting; he was sentenced to death [Four] for those crimes the following month. On March 31, 2017, Roof agreed to plead guilty in South Carolina state court to all state charges pending against him—nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony—to avoid a 2nd death sentence. In come back, he will accept a sentence of life in prison without parole. [Five] On April Ten, 2017, Roof was sentenced to life without parole nine times after pleading guilty to state murder charges. [6] [7] [8]
Contents
Roof was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to Franklin Bennett (called Bennett) Roof, a carpenter and a construction contractor, [9] and Amelia “Amy” Cowles, a bartender. His mother is a descendant of Hartford, Connecticut founder Timothy Stanley. [Ten] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] His parents had divorced but were temporarily reconciled at the time of his birth. When Roof was five, [16] his father married Paige Mann (née Hastings) in November 1999; they divorced after ten years of marriage. Bennett Roof was allegedly vocally and physically abusive toward Mann. [17] [Eighteen] [Nineteen] [20] [21] The family mostly lived in South Carolina, tho’ from about two thousand five to 2008, they temporarily moved to the Florida Keys. There is no information about Roof attending local schools there. [22]
According to a two thousand nine affidavit filed for Mann’s divorce, Roof exhibited “obsessive compulsive behavior” as he grew up, obsessing over germs and insisting on having his hair cut in a certain style. [Eighteen] When he was in middle school, he exhibited an interest in smoking marijuana, having once been caught spending money on it. [16]
In nine years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two South Carolina counties, including White Knoll High School in Lexington, in which he repeated the ninth grade, completing it in another school. He evidently stopped attending classes in two thousand ten and, according to his family, dropped out of school and spent his time alternating inbetween playing movie games and taking drugs, such as Suboxone. [16] [17] [Legal] [23] [24] [25] He was on the rolls of a local Evangelical Lutheran congregation. [26]
Prior to the attack, Roof was living alternately in Bennett’s and Cowles’ homes in downtown Columbia and Hopkins, respectively, [Nineteen] [27] [28] but was mostly raised by his stepmother Mann. [Legitimate] For several weeks preceding the attack, Roof had also been from time to time living in the home of an old friend from middle school and the latter’s mother, two brothers, and gf. [20] [28] [29] He allegedly spent his time using drugs and getting tipsy. [28] He had been working as a landscaper at the behest of his father, but abandon the job prior to the shooting. [16]
His maternal uncle, Carson Cowles, said that he voiced concern about the social withdrawal of his then-nineteen-year-old nephew, because “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.” [30] Cowles said he attempted to mentor Roof, but was rejected and they drifted apart. [30] According to Mann, Roof cut off all contact with her after her divorce from his father. When his sister planned to be married, he did not react to her invitation to the event. [20] [21]
A former high school classmate said that despite Roof’s racist comments, some of his friends in school were black. [24]
Earlier contacts with police
Roof had a prior police record consisting of two arrests, both made in the months preceding the attack. He was also investigated one more time during this period but without arrest or charge. [31] [32]
On March Two, 2015, he was questioned about a February twenty eight incident at the Columbiana Centre in Columbia, in which he entered the mall wearing all-black clothing and asked employees unsettling questions. During the questioning, authorities found a bottle of what was later admitted to be Suboxone, a narcotic that is used for treating either chronic agony or opiate-abuse addictions and that is manhandled as a recreational drug; [ citation needed ] Roof was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of drug possession. He was subsequently banned from the Columbiana Centre for a year.
On March 13, 2015, Roof was investigated for loitering in his parked car near a park in downtown Columbia. He had been recognized by an off-duty police officer who investigated his March two questioning; the officer then called a colleague to investigate. A police officer conducted a search of his vehicle and found a forearm grip for an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and six unloaded magazines, all capable of holding forty rounds. When asked about it, Roof informed the officer that he wished to purchase an AR-15, but did not have enough money to do so. He was not charged, as it was not illegal in South Carolina to wield a firearm grip. [33] [34]
On April 26, 2015, Roof was arrested again for trespassing on the Columbiana Centre mall’s grounds in disturbance of the ban. The ban was then extended for three extra years. [21] [24] [35]
According to James Comey, speaking in July 2015, Roof’s March arrest was at very first written as a felony, which would have required an inquiry into the charge during a firearms background examination. However, it was legally a misdemeanor charge and was incorrectly written as a felony at very first due to a data entry error made by a jail clerk. Despite this, Roof would not have been able to legally purchase firearms under a law that barred “unlawful user[s] of or addicted to any managed substance,” such as the Suboxone, from possessing firearms. [36] [37]
On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States. During a routine Bible examine at the church, a white man about twenty one years old, later identified as Roof, opened fire with a handgun, killing nine people. [38] Roof was unemployed [39] and living in largely African-American Eastover at the time of the attack. [40]
Motivation
According to a childhood friend, Roof went on a rant about the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the two thousand fifteen Baltimore protests that were sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while Gray was in police custody. [35] He also often claimed that “blacks were taking over the world”. [41] Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people, including a plot to attack the College of Charleston, but his claims were not taken gravely. [23] [27]
One pic from his Facebook page displayed him wearing a jacket decorated with two obsolete flags used as emblems among American white supremacist movements, those of Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and apartheid-era South Africa. [42] [43] [44] Another online photo demonstrated Roof sitting on the fetish mask of his car with an ornamental license plate with a Confederate flag on it. [45] According to his roomy, Roof voiced his support of racial segregation in the United States and had intended to embark a civil war. [46]
One of the friends who shortly hid Roof’s gun away from him said, “I don’t think the church was his primary target because he told us he was going for the school. But I think he couldn’t get into the school because of the security . so I think he just lodged for the church.” [47] [48] An African-American friend of his said that he never witnessed Roof voicing any racial prejudice, but also said that a week before the shooting, Roof had confided in him that he would commit a shooting at the college. [49]
On the day he was captured (June Eighteen, 2015), Roof confessed to committing the Charleston attack with the intention of kicking off a race war, [50] and reportedly told investigators he almost did not go through with his mission because members of the church investigate group had been so nice to him. [51]
Federal prosecutors said in August two thousand sixteen that Roof was “self-radicalized” online, instead of adopting his white supremacist ideology “through his individual associations or practices with white supremacist groups or individuals or others”. [52] [53]
Website and handwritten documents
On June 20, 2015, a website that had been registered to a “Dylann Roof” on February 9, 2015, lastrhodesian.com, was discovered. [54] However the identity of the domain’s possessor was intentionally masked the day after it was registered, [54] law enforcement officials confirmed Roof as the proprietor. [55] The site included a cache of photos of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag, as well as with the widely recognized neo-Nazi code numbers eighty eight (an abbreviation for the salute “Heil Hitler!”) and 1488, written in sand. [54] [55] Roof was also seen slobbering on and searing an American flag. [54] While some photographs seemed to display Roof at home in his room, others were taken on an apparent tour of slavery-related historical sites in North and South Carolina, including Sullivan’s Island, the largest marionette disembarkation port in North America, four former plantations, two cemeteries (one for white Confederate soldiers, the other for marionettes), and the Museum and Library of Confederate History in Greenville. [54] [56] [57] Roof is believed to have taken self-portraits using a timer, and his visits were not remembered by staff members working at the sites. [57]
The website also contained an unsigned, Two,444-word manifesto evidently authored by Roof, [58] in which he outlined his opinions, all methodically cracked into the following sections: “Blacks”, “Jews”, “Hispanics”, “East Asians”, “Patriotism”, and “An Explanation”: [56]
I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me. [54]
The manifesto states that its author was “truly awakened” by coverage of the shooting of Trayvon Martin:
I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was incapable to understand what the big deal was. It was demonstrable that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on white crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The very first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on white murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be deepthroating up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on white murders got disregarded? [54] [55] [59] [60]
The manifesto also mentioned as another source of influence the Northwest Front, a Seattle-based white supremacist organization infamous for its participation in the one thousand nine hundred seventy nine Greensboro massacre. [61]
According to web server logs, Roof’s website was last modified at Four:44 p.m. on June 17, 2015, when Roof noted, “[A]t the time of writing I am in a good hurry.” [54]
According to court documents filed in August 2016, Roof drafted two other manifestos, one in two thousand fifteen and the other in jail, recovered from his vehicle and jail cell respectively. He also made a list of churches and a “selection of victims”, along with other writings. [62] [63] [64]
Weapon purchase and FBI lapse
Roof personally purchased the gun used in the shooting from a retail gun store in West Columbia, [65] using money given to him on his bday. [27] The Washington Post reported on July Ten, 2015, that FBI Director James Comey said that Roof “was able to purchase the gun used in the attack only because of lapses in the FBI’s background-check system”. [66]
One week prior to the shooting, two of his friends attempted to hide the gun after Roof claimed he was going to kill people. However, they returned it to him after the gf of one of the friends, in whose trailer they hid the gun, pointed out he was on probation and needed to have the gun out of his possession. [27] [47]
Prior to the shooting
FBI analysis of Roof’s seized cellphone and computer found that he was in online communication with other white supremacists, according to unnamed officials. Albeit Roof’s contacts did not emerge to have encouraged the massacre, [67] the investigation was said to have widened to also include other persons of interest. [68]
Reaction by white supremacists
Albeit the Council of Conservative Citizens took down its website on June twenty in the instant wake of negative publicity, [56] its president, Earl Holt, stated that the organization was “hardly responsible” for Roof’s deeds. [59] However, the organization also issued a statement telling that Roof had some “legitimate grievances” against black people and that the group’s website “accurately and honestly report[s] black-on-white violent crime”. [Sixty-nine] Harold Covington, the founder of the Northwest Front, also condemned Roof’s deeds, but called the attack “a preview of coming attractions”. [61]
Through analysis of his manifesto, the Southern Poverty Law Center alleged that Roof was a reader and commenter on The Daily Stormer, a white nationalist news website. [70] Its editor Andrew Anglin “repudiated Roof’s crime and publicly disavowed violence, while endorsing many of Roof’s views.” [71] He claimed that while he would have sympathy with a white man shooting criminals, killing innocents including elderly women was “a totally insane act”. [72]
The attack was treated as a hate crime by police, and officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were called in to assist in the investigation and manhunt. [38] [73]
At Ten:44 a.m., on the morning after the attack, Roof was captured in a traffic stop in Shelby, North Carolina, approximately two hundred forty five miles (394 km) from the shooting scene. A .45-caliber pistol was found in the car during the arrest, tho’ it was not instantaneously clear if it was the same one used in the attack. [74] [75] Police received a tip-off from a driver, Debbie Dills, from Gastonia, North Carolina. She recognized Roof driving his car, a black Hyundai Elantra with South Carolina license plates and a three-flag “Confederate States of America” bumper decoration, [76] [77] on U.S. Route 74, recalling security camera pics taken at the church and distributed to the media. She later recalled, “I got closer and witnessed that haircut. I was jumpy. I had the worst feeling. Is that him or not him?” She called her employer, who contacted local police, and then tailed the suspect’s car for thirty five miles (56 km) until she was certain authorities were moving in for an arrest. [78]
His older half sister also reported him to the police after observing his photo on the news. [17] [79]
Roof was arrested and was interrogated by agents of the FBI. He stated that he had been traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, when he was arrested in Shelby. Police in Shelby deferred his questioning to the FBI. [80] An unidentified source said interrogations with Roof after his arrest determined he had been planning the attack for around six months, researched Emanuel AME Church, and targeted it because of its role in African-American history. [38]
On the evening of June Legitimate, 2015, Roof waived his extradition rights and was flown to Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston. [40] [81] [82] [83] At the jail, his cell-block neighbor was Michael Slager, the former North Charleston officer charged with first-degree murder in the wake of his shooting of Walter Scott. [84] [85]
Dylann Roof is the very first person in U.S. history to have faced both a state and federal death penalty at the same time. In September 2015, it was announced Roof would face capital penalty in his state prosecution, and in May 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Roof would face capital penalty in his federal prosecution as well. [86]
State prosecution
On June Nineteen, 2015, Roof was charged with nine counts of murder and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. [83] [87] He very first appeared in Charleston County court by movie conference at a bond hearing later that day. At the hearing, shooting survivors and relatives of five of the victims spoke to Roof directly, telling that they were “pleading for his soul” and forgave him. [38] [39] [88] [89] Governor Nikki Haley called for prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Roof. [90]
The judge, Charleston County chief magistrate James “Skip” Gosnell, Jr., caused controversy at the bond hearing with his statement that, alongside the dead victims and their families, “there are victims on this youthfull man’s side of the family […] Nobody would have ever thrown them into the tornado of events that they are being thrown into.” [91] Gosnell then set a $1 million bond for the weapons possession charge and no bail on the nine counts of murder. [92]
On July 7, 2015, Roof was indicted on three fresh charges of attempted murder, one for each person who survived the shooting. [93] A improvised gag order was issued by a judge on July fourteen following the appearance of a letter purportedly written by Roof on an online auction site. [94] Seven groups, including news media outlets, families of the slain victims, and church officials, called for easing some limitations placed by the gag order, particularly 9-1-1 calls. [95] Portions of the gag order were lifted on October 14, permitting for the release of 9-1-1 call transcripts and other documents, but the order remained in place for graphic crime scene photos and movies, as well as audio for the 9-1-1 calls. [96]
On July 16, 2015, Roof’s trial in state court was scheduled by Circuit Court Judge J.C. Nicholson to begin on July 11, 2016. [97] [98] On July 20, Roof was ordered to provide handwriting samples to investigators. The order explained that following his arrest in Shelby, notes and lists were found written on his palm and at other locations; that the handwriting samples were needed to determine if the handwriting matched. [99] [100]
On September Trio, state prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said that she intended to seek the death penalty for Roof because more than two people were killed in the shooting and others’ lives were put at risk. [101]
On September 16, Roof said through his attorney that he was willing to plead guilty to the state charges to avoid being sentenced to death. [102]
Roof reappeared in state court on October 23, 2015, [89] before Nicholson. [103]
The jury selection process for the state trial was originally expected to embark in June 2016; [104] jury selection was postponed in November 2016. [105]
In April 2016, the state trial was delayed to January 17, 2017. [106] It was delayed again in January 2017. [107] [108] [109]
On April Ten, 2017, Roof was sentenced to nine life sentences after pleading guilty to state murder charges. [6] [7] [8]
Federal prosecution
Indictment
Five days after the shooting, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a grand jury had indicted Roof on thirty three federal charges: nine counts of using a firearm to commit murder and twenty four civil rights violations (12 hate crime charges under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act and twelve counts under a 2nd hate-crime statute that prohibits using force or menacing the use of force to obstruct a person’s free exercise of religious beliefs), with eighteen of the charges carrying the federal death penalty. [110]
On July 31, 2015, Roof pleaded not guilty to the federal charges against him at the behest of his lawyer David Bruck. Roof desired to plead guilty, but Bruck stated he was not willing to advise a guilty prayer until the government indicated whether it wished to seek the death penalty, as eighteen of the thirty three charges could carry the death penalty. [111]
On May 24, 2016, the Justice Department announced they would seek the death penalty for Roof. As he was already facing the death penalty in South Carolina, Roof became the very first person in U.S. history to face both a federal and state death penalty at the same time. [112]
Trial preparations
On June 9, 2016, Roof, through his lawyers, announced that he did not want to be attempted by a jury. If the request was granted, the judge presiding over his case would hear the case entirely by himself, determining guilt or innocence and, if Roof is convicted, whether to sentence him to death. [113]
On August Two, 2016, Roof’s lawyers filed a movement arguing that the federal capital penalty laws were unconstitutional. [114] Federal prosecutors filed a response on August 22, asking the judge to reject the mobility. [52]
On August 23, 2016, federal prosecutors filed court documents announcing their intention to call thirteen experienced witnesses at trial, including white supremacy experts who were expected to testify on Roof’s “extremist ideology, including a belief in the need to use violence to achieve white supremacy.” The documents also indicated the presence of extensive incriminating evidence against Roof. A hearing was set for September 1, 2016. [53] [63]
Around August 31, 2016, District Judge Richard Gergel ordered that an in camera hearing be held on September 1. The judge was to rule on the admissibility of some “potentially explosive” evidence. Gergel wrote: “This example is one of those uncommon cases where Defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial outweighs the public’s and the press’ Very first Amendment right of access. . This is an unusually sensitive period in this proceeding where very prejudicial publicity could taint the jury pool and make selection of a fair and impartial jury increasingly challenging.” Two Charleston-area media outlets, The Charleston Post and Courier and WCBD-TV, unsuccessfully sought to keep the hearing open. [115]
On September 6, 2016, federal prosecutors filed a movement seeking to bar Roof’s attorneys from asking the jurors for grace during sentencing should he be found guilty of the charges against him. They argue that the defense will already have the chance to present evidence that could sway the jury’s opinion for sentencing. [116] [117] The next day, prosecutors asked for the use of summary charts as evidence for the trial. One of the charts was expected to be a timeline of the case as drafted by the agent responsible for investigating the shooting. [117]
Jury selection commenced on September 26, 2016. [118] The initial pool of three thousand candidates was narrowed down to the final jury of twelve, plus alternates. [119] The federal trial itself was expected to begin late November or early December and last for about two months. [117] [118] [120]
On November 8, 2016, District Court judge Richard M. Gergel ordered a competency evaluation for Roof, which Gergel scheduled for November 16, 2016. Gergel also postponed the jury selection to November 21, 2016. [121] [122]
On November 14, 2016, Gergel delayed the competency hearing to November 17, 2016. [123] [124] [125] However, on November 16, 2016, Gergel delayed the competency hearing to November 21, 2016. Gergel also delayed the jury selection to November 28, 2016. [126] [127] [128] The competency hearing ended November 22, 2016. [129] [130]
On November 25, 2016, Roof was announced competent enough to stand trial. [131] Three days later, a federal judge granted Roof’s movement for pro se representation. [132] [133] [134] [135]
On December Four, 2016, Roof, in a handwritten request, asked Gergel to give him back his defense team for the guilt phase of his federal death penalty trial. [136] [137] [138] [139] On December Five, 2016, Gergel permitted Roof to hire back his lawyers for the guilt phase of his trial. [140] [141] On December 6, 2016, a federal judge denied a motility by Roof’s defense team to delay Roof’s trial. [142]
Trial and sentencing
On December 7, 2016, Roof’s federal trial began. [143] The jury consisted of “two black women, eight white women, one white man and one black man”. [144] Two days into the trial, Roof’s confession was played in court, admitting that he had killed the people at the church before chuckling. [145] On December 15, 2016, after about two hours of deliberation, the jury found Roof guilty on all thirty three counts. [146]
At a court hearing on December 28, 2016, Roof reiterated that he would proceed with the sentencing phase without attorneys, albeit Judge Gergel repeatedly warned him that it was not in his interests to do so. At the hearing Roof said that he did not plan to call any witnesses or present any evidence at the sentencing phase in order to avoid the death penalty. [147]
On January Three, 2017, following a lengthy closed-door competency hearing, Judge Gergel denied a movability, submitted under seal by Roof’s court-appointed counsel, that sought to have Roof proclaimed incompetent. [148] [149] Gergel wrote: “After fully considering all of the evidence introduced, the court ruled from the bench that Defendant remains competent to stand trial and to self-represent.” [148]
On January Ten, 2017, the jury recommended the death penalty for Roof, [150] and on January 11, two thousand seventeen Judge Gergel formally sentenced Dylann Roof to death by lethal injection. [151]
Until April 21, two thousand seventeen Roof was located at the Charleston County Jail; on that day federal authorities took custody of him. On April 22, 2017, Roof arrived at USP Terre Haute, the location of the federal death row for guys and the federal execution chamber and where all executions by the federal government take place. [152]
Post-trial proceedings and release of documents
On May Ten, 2017, Judge Gergel denied Roof’s mobility for a fresh trial. [153] [154] On the same day, Gergel unsealed psychiatric reports from two court-ordered exams of Roof performed by Dr. James Ballenger, a forensic psychiatrist, as well as the transcripts of two competency hearings, all of which found Roof competent to stand trial. [154] [155] The court very first ordered a psychiatric exam after Roof wrote a letter to prosecutors referring to his defense attorneys “the sneakiest group of people I have ever met” and adamantly rejecting their strategy to portray him as mentally ill. [154]
The psychiatric report displayed that Roof stated of the relatives of his victims that he “did not identify with them, he didn’t care.” [154] Ballenger concluded that Roof had “perhaps some Autistic traits” and meets the criteria for “Social Anxiety Disorder, most likely Generalized Anxiety Disorder, possible Autistic Spectrum Disorder, a Mixed Substance Manhandle Disorder, depression by history and a Schizoid Personality Disorder” but was competent to stand trial. [155] Ballenger wrote that Roof blocked his attorneys from introducing any evidence of autism or other disorders, as well as various delusions, [154] at trial because he did not want “any issue to take away from the rationale he had for committing his crimes” because he felt that it would “his reputation was ruined, . He proceeds to feel that the only thing that is significant to him is to protect his reputation.” [155] Roof, who denies having autism, [156] told Ballenger that he “would rather die” than rely on autism defense, stating “it would ruin me” and “everybody would think I am a weirdo.” [154] Ballenger concluded that: “all of his decisions in the trial are predominated and driven by his primary racial prejudice and wish to preserve that as the foot rationale for his crimes and to protect his long term picture and reputation as someone who has no mental illness.” [154] Roof has noted that he chooses to be known as a sociopath, rather than autistic. [157]
On August Four, 2016, Roof was reportedly hammered by a black inmate while detained at the Charleston County Detention Center. Roof, who suffered hits and bruising to the face and figure, was not earnestly injured, and he was permitted to come back to his cell after being examined by jail medical personnel. The inmate was identified as 25-year-old Dwayne Marion Stafford, who was awaiting trial on charges of first-degree brunt and strong-arm robbery. Stafford was able to exit his unlocked cell, get through a steel cell door with a narrow vertical window, and go down the stairs into the jail’s protective custody unit to reach Roof. At the time of the attack, Roof was alone after two detention officers assigned to be with him left, one being on break and the other called away to do another task. [158] [159] [160] [161]
Roof and his attorney have stated that they do not plan on pressing charges. [162] [163] The night after the attack, eighteen months after his initial arrest, Stafford was released on over $100,000 bond. [164] [165]