Dylann Roof talked of 'hurting a bunch of people' before shootings, says friend
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Version 0 of 1. A friend of the gunman allegedly responsible for Wednesday’s mass shooting inside an historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, has said he had talked a week earlier about attacking a school or a college campus. Christon Scriven, a black neighbour of Dylann Roof, told AP that he thought that Roof’s comments made during a recent night of drinking were just drunken bluster. But Scriven and another friend, Joey Meek, were concerned enough to go out to Roof’s car and retrieve his .45-caliber handgun, hiding it in an air-conditioning vent of a mobile home until they all sobered up. “He just said he was going to hurt a bunch of people” at the college of Charleston, Scriven told AP. “I said, ‘What did you say? Why do you want to hurt those people in Charleston?’” “He just said: ‘In seven days. ... I have seven days.’” “My reaction at the time was: ‘You’re just talking crazy,’” Scriven, 22, told the Washington Post. “I don’t think he’s always there.” Scriven also told NBC News that Roof may have changed his plans after deciding the college campus was a harder target to access. “He just said on Wednesday, everything was going to happen. He said they had seven days,” Scriven said to NBC News. “I just ran through my head that he did it. Like, he really went and did what he said he was going to do.” A week later, on Wednesday, Roof, 21, allegedly went into Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, sat for nearly an hour at a Bible study class, and then opened fire on the congregation. The exchange recounted by Scriven matches accounts from other friends of Roof who have been interviewed by the AP. |