Charleston, United States--For someone reportedly bent on igniting a race war, Dylann Storm Roof had little to say for himself Friday in the first of what will be many court appearances.
The 21-year-old suspect in Wednesday night's massacre at an African-American church Bible study class spoke only to answer a judge's questions at a 14-minute bail hearing.
Roof appeared by video link from an adjacent jail block, flanked by two guards in dark body armor.
He had been charged earlier in the day with nine counts of murder at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and one count of using a gun to commit the crime.
On a fuzzy video screen, he appeared subdued, bowing his head ever so slightly.
"I have some questions, if I may, with permission of counsel," said Judge James Gosnell in the presence of relatives of several of the victims.
"What is your age?" the judge asked.
"21," replied Roof, wearing an open-neck shirt, his bowl-cut hair sagging in the day's heat and humidity.
- Jobless -
"You're 21. Are you employed?"
"No, sir."
"You are unemployed at this time?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you," the judge concluded.
Roof also verified his home address, in Eastover, a village of 800 near the state capital Columbia.
A detective confirmed Roof had had two previous run-ins with the law for trespassing rap and a pending drugs possession charge.
If Roof had little to say, relatives of many of his victims took turns, at Gosnell's invitation, to express their feelings.
They had arrived, in ones and twos and threes, in the hours preceeding the hearing, escorted by deputy sheriffs in broad-rim hats, solemnly passing a battery of TV cameras and news photographers without taking questions.
"You took something very precious from me," said Nadine Collier, daughter of Ethel Lance, 70, a lifelong member of the Emanuel church.
"I will never talk to her ever again. I will never, ever hold her again," she said, wearing a long green dress.
- Forgiveness -
But she went on to tell Roof: "I forgive you and God have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. But I forgive you. I forgive you."
Anthony Thompson, husband of Myra Thompson, 59, and vicar of another of Charleston's many churches, also expressed forgiveness, before giving Roof some Christian advice.
"Repent, confess to the one who matters most, Christ, so that he can change it, change your ways, no matter what happened to you, and you'll be OK," he said.
"Do that and you'll be better off than what you are right now."
Relatives of other victims expressed similar feelings, but no one spoke for the most prominent victim of all, Clementa Pinckney, 41, the chief pastor at Emanuel and a longtime South Carolina state senator.
The judge, who has a local reputation for giving soundbites from the bench, caused a stir on social media by suggesting that Roof's family deserved sympathy as well.
"Nobody would have ever thrown them into the whirlwind of events that they have been thrown into," he said.
Under South Carolina law, Gosnell as a bail court judge had no authority to set bond for Roof as a murder suspect -- but he could do so on the weapons charge, and he did.
- One million dollars -
"On the one count of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, I'm setting your bond, young man, at $1 million," the judge said, rather ceremoniously.
With that, Roof returned to his cell in the Charleston County detention center's "administrative segregation housing unit" -- a euphemistic term for solitary confinement.
In the same unit is Michael Slager, a North Charleston police officer charged with fatally shooting a black man, Walter Scott, in April as a passer-by caught the incident on video.
They might be in the same part of the detention center, but "they are not neighbors" and have no contact with each other, said assistant sheriff's deputy Mitch Lucas.
Gosnell ordered Roof, who is represented by a public defender, to return to court on October 23 and February 5 -- a timeframe that Lucas said is not unusual for South Carolina criminal proceedings.
AFP
