Laquanda Moultrie, holding a stuffed bear she hopes to leave at Emanuel AME Church, stands with Surreace Cox near the police barrier. (Matthew Fortner/Staff) 
 
 After a night of fear and grief in downtown Charleston, authorities in North Carolina arrested a young white man on charges that he gunned down nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, ending a vast search but leaving the city and the nation reeling. 
 
 Video To see a video of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s opening prayer at the Charleston YWCA’s April 24 “Requiem on Racism 2015,” go to https://vimeo.com/126710749 
 
 The Holy City struggled to comprehend why the gunman police identified as 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof would sit down for an hour at a Bible study in the historic black church on Calhoun Street and then open fire, wiping out most of the clergy. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the killings as a hate crime. 
 
 The victims The nine people fatally shot at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church: Clementa Pinckney, 41, the primary pastor who also served as a state senator. Cynthia Hurd, 54, St. Andrews regional branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, a church pastor, speech therapist and coach of the girls’ track and field team at Goose Creek High School. Tywanza Sanders, 26, who had a degree in business administration from Allen University, where Pinckney also attended. Ethel Lance, 70, a retired Gailliard Center employee who has worked recently as a church janitor. Susie Jackson, 87, Lance’s cousin who was a longtime church member. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, a retired director of the local Community Development Block Grant Program who joined the church in March as a pastor. Myra Thompson, 59, a pastor at the church. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a pastor, who died in a hospital operating room. 
 
 To President Barack Obama, the shooting stirred up “a dark part” of American history when racially motivated violence was more prevalent. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch declared that such acts have “no place in a civilized society.” 
 
 The emotional weight of the ordeal also brought local activists, Charleston’s police chief and South Carolina’s governor to tears as they fought to find words to ease community members who fear further violence in a city with a long and complicated history involving race. 
 
 “We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” Gov. Nikki Haley said, her voice trembling. “We have some grieving to do. ... Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe. That’s not something we ever thought we’d deal with.” 
 
 After a massive manhunt, Roof, who has shown interest in racial segregation and the Confederacy, was caught during a traffic stop Thursday morning in Shelby, N.C., 250 miles north of Charleston. A motorist there recognized Roof’s 15-year-old Hyundai from wanted posters distributed by police. 
 
 A resident of Eastover, a rural town near Columbia, Roof smiled at television cameras Thursday afternoon as Shelby officers led him to a waiting cruiser, his mop of blond hair hanging in his eyes and a ballistic vest covering his torso. He waived extradition, and South Carolina flew him back to Charleston County to face charges in what has been called one of worst hate crimes the United States has seen in decades. 
 
 Meanwhile, the community mourned and searched for answers, with hundreds packing prayer vigils in a show of solidarity and support for the fallen and the families they left behind. 
 
 In all, six women and three men died after gunfire sprayed through Emanuel’s basement. Among the dead were a state senator who served as the church’s primary pastor, a beloved county librarian, a dedicated girl’s track and field coach and a young college graduate. The victims ranged in age from 26 to 87. 
 
 Their deaths marked the second fatal shooting in the past three months that has drawn the nation’s eyes to the Charleston area, roiling racial tensions and prompting federal investigations. The FBI has been examining potential civil rights violations in the April 4 killing of Walter Scott, a black man shot in the back by a white North Charleston police officer. FBI agents also are looking into what motivated Wednesday’s bloody attack in Emanuel AME Church, Columbia-based spokeswoman Denise Taiste confirmed. 
 
 The tragedy also renewed politicians’ focus on reform of the nation’s gun laws. Obama said Thursday during a press briefing in Washington that the Charleston shooting should spark national introspection about the availability of guns. 
 
 “I’ve had to make statements like this too many times,” Obama said. “Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times. Once again, innocent people were killed because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.” 
 
 The shooting 
 
 The tragedy unfolded on a hot, steamy night after about a dozen clergy and church members gathered for a regular Bible study and prayer service. They met in the basement, a ground-level floor beneath the sanctuary that housed the pastor’s office and other rooms. 
 
 They studied Mark 4 16:20. “Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy ...” 
 
 A young white man, not part of the congregation, came in around 8:15 p.m. and sat down quietly. He stayed for 40 to 50 minutes as the session continued. 
 
 “But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away ...” 
 
 Suddenly, the young man rose, uttered remarks that betrayed his contempt for blacks and opened fire with a gun. 
 
 A female trustee, who hid under a table, was among the survivors. The gunman told her he would let her live so that she could tell the story of what happened. Two other survivors, including a young girl, played dead, church members said. 
 
 The search 
 
 The gunman slipped out of the church as dozens of police officers descended on the area armed with military-style rifles, teams of police dogs and helicopters that circled overhead. 
 
 Area residents locked the doors and bolted their gates, fearful after news spread that a gunman was on the loose. Activists from local black communities expressed fear of being targeted next. 
 
 James Johnson, South Carolina president of the National Action Network, stood in the middle of Calhoun Street, where city leaders had announced the death toll moments earlier Thursday morning, and cried. 
 
 Johnson has spoken out for years about civil rights concerns in Charleston-area policing. He had recently joined Clementa Pinckney, the slain AME church pastor, for a summit about the Scott shooting in North Charleston. 
 
 But Johnson had never coped with anything like this, he said, and he worried that it would discourage people from talking about racially charged problems. 
 
 “We feel that we’re not safe,” he said. “They could do the same thing when we speak out against this injustice. We must be mindful.” 
 
 As Johnson and others grappled with such thoughts, the gunman, who had slipped out of Charleston, put distance between himself and the carnage he’d left behind. 
 
 Investigators soon broadened their hunt, deploying local and statewide police agencies and top agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They also circulated surveillance camera images of a young man with a bowl haircut who appeared to be the gunman they were looking for. A bulletin included pictures of the gunman’s 2000 Hyundai Elantra and a telephone tip line for people to call if they saw the car or its driver. 
 
 Tips started rolling in soon after the bulletin went out. By mid-morning, investigators named Roof as the suspected gunman and a call went out for his arrest. Shortly after 11 a.m., authorities announced he had been nabbed in North Carolina. 
 
 “We had a number of tips that were coming in,” Mullen, the police chief, later said. “It was amazing. Whenever we got a lead ... we sent out teams. It was a tremendous effort. ... I am so pleased that we were able to resolve this case quickly ... so that nobody else is harmed by this individual.” 
 
 A picture soon emerged of a troubled young high school dropout who had talked about blacks in racially inflammatory terms and had been arrested in recent months on drug and trespassing charges. 
 
 He had been banned from a Columbia mall in February after employees of two stores alerted police that Roof, dressed in all black clothing, was asking odd questions about their operations and when workers left for the night, an incident report stated. He was arrested on a trespassing charge in April after returning to the mall, records show. 
 
 Friends said something seemed to be bothering him, but he stayed out of trouble until he walked into Emanuel AME Church Wednesday night. 
 
 The aftermath 
 
 Obama and Vice President Joe Biden called Charleston Mayor Joe Riley on Thursday to relay their condolences. They praised the efforts to track down the suspect, Riley said. 
 
 “It’s a wonderful sign that we don’t let these people get away with these dastardly deeds,” he said. 
 
 But further rattling people as they mourned the losses, someone called in bomb threats to another downtown AME church where residents and leaders had gathered for a vigil and to the office building where Charleston County’s coroner announced the names of those who were slain. 
 
 Emotions already were raw this week from the anniversary of another tragedy that also claimed nine lives. The shooting occurred on the eve of the eighth remembrance of the June 18, 2007, Sofa Super Store blaze in West Ashley that killed Charleston firefighters. 
 
 County Coroner Rae Wooten said the anniversary made her team’s response to the shooting more difficult. 
 
 “It all came back,” she said. “It was somewhat disbelief that we could ever face something that horrific again.” 
 
 But people from local leaders to the president expressed resolve to overcome the latest carnage. 
 
 U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., called it “absolutely despicable” for such violence to occur in a place where people come together to “laugh, love and rejoice in God’s name.” 
 
 Obama said Emanuel AME and its congregation have risen before from flames, an earthquake and other dark times to give hope to Charleston, “and with our prayers and love and buoyancy, it will rise now as a place of peace.” 
 
 “Acts like this have no place in our country and no place in a civilized society,” Lynch, the attorney general, added during a Thursday morning news conference in Washington. “I want everyone in Charleston and everyone who has been affected by this tragedy to know that we will do everything in our power to help heal this community and make it whole again.” 
 
 Christina Elmore, Glenn Smith, Robert Behre, Melissa Boughton, Tony Bartelme, Schuyler Kropf and Jennifer Berry Hawes contributed to this report. ||||| CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A former friend who had reconnected with the man accused of a shooting massacre inside a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, said Dylann Storm Roof had become an avowed racist. 
 
 Gary and Aurelia Washington, center left and right, the son and granddaughter of Ethel Lance who died in Wednesday's shooting, leave a sidewalk memorial in front of Emanuel AME Church comforted by fellow... (Associated Press) 
 
 Olina Ortega, left, and Austin Gibbs light candles at a sidewalk memorial in front of Emanuel AME Church where people were killed by a white gunman Wednesday during a prayer meeting inside the historic... (Associated Press) 
 
 Olina Ortega, left, and Austin Gibbs light candles at a sidewalk memorial in front of Emanuel AME Church where people were killed by a white gunman Wednesday during a prayer meeting inside the historic... (Associated Press) 
 
 Joey Meek reconnected with Roof a few weeks ago and said that while they got drunk together on vodka, Roof began complaining that "blacks were taking over the world" and that "someone needed to do something about it for the white race." 
 
 Roof, 21, is accused of fatally shooting nine people during a Bible study at The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on Wednesday night, ripping out a piece of South Carolina's civic heart and adding to the ever-growing list of America's racial casualties. 
 
 Police captured Roof in Shelby, North Carolina, after a motorist spotted him at a traffic light on her way to work. His apprehension ended an intense, hours-long manhunt. 
 
 Roof waived extradition and was back in Charleston on Thursday night with a bond hearing pending, authorities said. 
 
 Charleston officials announced a prayer vigil for Friday evening. The city's mayor described the shooting at the church as an act of "pure, pure concentrated evil." 
 
 The victims included a state senator who doubled as the church's minister, three other pastors, a regional library manager, a high school coach and speech therapist, a government administrator, a college enrollment counselor and a recent college graduate — six women and three men who felt called to open their church to all. 
 
 President Barack Obama called the tragedy yet another example of damage wreaked in America by guns. 
 
 NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks said "there is no greater coward than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people." Others bemoaned the loss to a church that has served as a bastion of black power for 200 years, despite efforts by white supremacists to wipe it out. 
 
 "Of all cities, in Charleston, to have a horrible hateful person go into the church and kill people there to pray and worship with each other is something that is beyond any comprehension and is not explained," said Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. "We are going to put our arms around that church and that church family." 
 
 Surveillance video showed the gunman entering the church Wednesday night, and Charleston County Coroner Rae Wilson said he initially didn't appear threatening. 
 
 "The suspect entered the group and was accepted by them, as they believed that he wanted to join them in this Bible study," she said. Then, "he became very aggressive and violent." 
 
 Meek called the FBI after recognizing Roof in the surveillance footage, down to the stained sweatshirt he wore while playing Xbox videogames in Meek's home the morning of the attack. 
 
 "I didn't THINK it was him. I KNEW it was him," Meek told The Associated Press after being interviewed by investigators. 
 
 Meek said during their reunion a few weeks ago, Roof told him that he had used birthday money from his parents to buy a .45-caliber Glock pistol and that he had "a plan." He didn't say what the plan was, but Meek said it scared him enough that he took the gun out of Roof's car and hid it in his house until the next day. 
 
 It's not clear whether Roof had any connection to the 16 white supremacist organizations operating in South Carolina, but he appears to be a "disaffected white supremacist," based on his Facebook page, said Richard Cohen, president of Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. 
 
 On his Facebook page, Roof displayed the flags of defeated white-ruled regimes, posing with a Confederate flags plate on his car and wearing a jacket with stitched-on flag patches from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, which is now black-led Zimbabwe. 
 
 His previous record includes misdemeanor drug and trespassing charges. 
 
 Spilling blood inside a black church — especially "Mother Emanuel," founded in 1816 — evoked painful memories nationwide, a reminder that black churches so often have been the targets of racist violence. 
 
 A church founder, Denmark Vesey, was hanged after trying to organize a slave revolt in 1822, and white landowners burned the church in revenge, leaving parishioners to worship underground until after the Civil War. The congregation rebuilt and grew stronger, eventually winning campaigns for voting rights and political representation. 
 
 Its lead pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney — among the dead — recalled his church's history in a 2013 sermon, saying "we don't see ourselves as just a place where we come to worship, but as a beacon and as a bearer of the culture." 
 
 "What the church is all about," Pinckney said, is the "freedom to be fully what God intends us to be and have equality in the sight of God. And sometimes you got to make noise to do that. Sometimes you may have to die like Denmark Vesey to do that." 
 
 Pinckney, 41, was a married father of two and a Democrat who spent 19 years in the South Carolina legislature after he was first elected at 23, becoming the youngest member of the House. 
 
 The other victims were Cynthia Hurd, 54; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, 70; Susie Jackson, 87; and the reverends DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49; Sharonda Singleton, 45; and Daniel Simmons Sr., 74. 
 
 U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the attack would be investigated as a hate crime. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Contributors include Alex Sanz, Meg Kinnard and David Goldman in Charleston, South Carolina; Mitch Weiss in Columbia, South Carolina; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Eric Tucker in Washington; and Jacob Jordan in Atlanta. ||||| Worshippers embrace following a group prayer across the street from the scene of a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Associated Press) 
 
 This image has been provided by the Charleston Police Department, Thursday, June 18, 2015. A man opened fire during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in downtown Charleston, S.C., Wednesday... (Associated Press) 
 
 A man kneels across the street from where police gather outside the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. (Wade Spees/The Post And Courier via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 The steeple of Emanuel AME Church is visible as police close off a section of Calhoun Street early Thursday, June 18, 2015 following a shooting Wednesday night in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Associated Press) 
 
 Police stand outside the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Associated Press) 
 
 Worshippers gather to pray down the street from the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Associated Press) 
 
 Police close off a section of Calhoun Street near the Emanuel AME Church following a shooting Wednesday, June 17, 2015, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (Associated Press) 
 
 Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the suspect in a shooting that killed nine people was at a historic black church attending a meeting and stayed for almost an hour before gunfire erupted. 
 
 Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen gave the details at a Thursday morning news conference. He didn't elaborate. At the news conference, he also identified the victims of the Wednesday church night shooting as six females and three males. He says names won't be released until families are notified. 
 
 The suspect is described as a white man thought to be in his early 20s. Mullen says the suspect is a "very dangerous individual." 
 
 Earlier, Mullen said he had no reason to think the suspect has left the Charleston area, but is distributing information about him and the vehicle around the country. 
 
 7:05 a.m. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the victims of a shooting at a historic black church were six females and three males. 
 
 At a news conference Thursday, Mullen did not give other details about the victims. He says names will not be released until families are notified. 
 
 The Wednesday night shooting is being called a hate crime. The suspect is described as a white man thought to be in his early 20s. Mullen says the suspect is a "very dangerous individual." Mullen urged people to call police about the suspect and not pursue him or his vehicle on their own. 
 
 Earlier, Mullen said he had no reason to think the suspect has left the Charleston area, but is distributing information about the suspect and the vehicle around the country. 
 
 ___ 
 
 6:10 a.m. 
 
 Police say they have surveillance video of a possible suspect and vehicle in the shooting deaths of nine people at a historic black church in downtown Charleston that's being called a hate crime. 
 
 Police Chief Greg Mullen met with reporters early Thursday to distribute the video. Mullen said he couldn't give a specific make and model of the vehicle because they could not be certain from the video. 
 
 The suspect is described as a white man thought to be in his early 20s. Mullen said he had no reason to think the suspect has left the Charleston area, but is distributing information about the suspect and the vehicle around the country. 
 
 Mullen said police consider the shooting a hate crime. The FBI and state police are helping in the search. 
 
 ___ 
 
 3:35 a.m. (EDT) 
 
 Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the FBI will be involved in the investigation of a shooting at a historic black church that killed nine and is being called a hate crime. 
 
 Mullen said the FBI would aid the investigation while speaking at a news conference that was also attended by FBI Special Agent in Charge David A. Thomas. 
 
 House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford says that among those killed at Emanuel AME Church was the church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney. 
 
 Authorities are still searching for the shooter, who's described as a white male in his early 20s. 
 
 ___ 
 
 3 a.m. (EDT) 
 
 A South Carolina legislative leader says the church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, is among those killed in a shooting at a historic black church in downtown Charleston that authorities are calling a hate crime. 
 
 House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford says Pinckney was killed along with eight others in the Wednesday night shooting at Emanuel AME Church. 
 
 Authorities are still searching for the shooter, who's described as a white male in his early 20s. 
 
 ___ 
 
 1 a.m. (EDT) 
 
 Charleston police say nine people have been killed in a shooting at a historic black church in what authorities intend to investigate as a hate crime. 
 
 Police Chief Greg Mullen says eight people were found dead Wednesday at Emanuel AME Church and another person died later at the hospital. 
 
 Mullen says a prayer meeting was going on at the church at the time of the shooting. 
 
 The shooter, described as a white male, was not yet in custody. 
 
 ___ 
 
 12:45 a.m. (EDT) 
 
 Mayor Joseph P. Riley has confirmed to The Associated Press that police have told him nine are dead in a shooting at a historic black church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. 
 
 Riley said he will release more details shortly at a news conference with Charleston police. 
 
 Police were still looking for the suspect in the Wednesday night shooting at Emanuel AME Church. 
 
 __ 
 
 12:30 a.m. (EDT) 
 
 South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has responded to the shooting in downtown Charleston. 
 
 "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," she said in a statement early Thursday morning. 
 
 Police were still searching for a white male suspect. 
 
 ___ 
 
 12:09 a.m. (EDT) 
 
 The Post and Courier newspaper reports that Mayor Joe Riley has confirmed there are fatalities in a shooting that occurred at the site of a church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. 
 
 Riley called the Wednesday night shooting "an unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy." 
 
 An Associated Press reporter on the scene said police were moving members of the media on the site back because of an "imminent" threat. 
 
 GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush has canceled Thursday events in the area because of the shooting. ||||| CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The latest on the Charleston church shooting, including a hearing on what evidence can be released to the media and the investigation into a friend of the suspect (all times local): 
 
 12:45 p.m. 
 
 The girlfriend of a man being investigated by federal authorities in connection with a deadly shooting at an African-American church in South Carolina says he is worried about going to jail. 
 
 Lindsey Fry said Joey Meek is trying to get a lawyer after getting a letter from federal agents saying he is under investigation for lying to law enforcement. 
 
 The man charged in the church shooting, Dylann Roof, lived with Meek, his two brothers and Fry before the June 17 shooting. 
 
 She says Meek has a new job fixing air conditioners and is trying to save money to find a new place to live and a new car. 
 
 ___ 
 
 10:55 a.m. 
 
 An official says a friend of the white man accused of shooting nine black churchgoers to death in Charleston is being investigated by federal authorities. 
 
 A federal law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press on Wednesday that a letter was sent last month telling Joey Meek he was under investigation for lying to law enforcement and misprision of a felony, which means authorities believe Meek knew about a crime before or after it was committed but didn't report it. 
 
 The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. 
 
 Meek has said Dylann Roof stayed with him in Lexington County before the June 17 shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 The investigation was first reported by The State newspaper. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press reporter Meg Kinnard contributed to this report from Columbia, South Carolina. 
 
 ___ 
 
 10:50 a.m. 
 
 A South Carolina judge says he will release some police documents and other evidence in connection with the Charleston church shooting that claimed the lives of nine black worshippers. 
 
 Judge J.C. Nicholson said he wanted to sit down with attorneys for the victims and the news media to review some of the more graphic evidence — including photographs of the crime scene — before deciding specifically what will be released. 
 
 During a hearing in Charleston on Wednesday, Nicholson also indicated the 911 calls would be released, but that there had been no decision whether the tapes themselves or just simply transcripts would be released. ||||| FILE - In this June18, 2016 file photo, Dylann Storm Roof is escorted from the Sheby Police Department in Shelby, N.C. The trial for Roof, a white man accused of killing nine black people at the church,... (Associated Press) 
 
 CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A survivor of last year's massacre at a black South Carolina church testified Wednesday that her Bible study group had just closed their eyes and started praying when a loud sound shattered the stillness. The basement room went dark. 
 
 When Felicia Sanders opened her eyes, she saw a young white man the parishioners had welcomed to the study only a half-hour earlier. Dylann Roof was mowing down the pastor and eight others with gunfire and hurling racial insults. 
 
 Sanders, the first witness in Roof's death penalty trial, fought back tears as she recalled sheltering her granddaughter under a table and telling her to play dead. She watched in horror as her son Tywanza and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson, were killed in the fusillade. 
 
 At one point, she looked across the courtroom toward Roof and called him "evil, evil, evil." 
 
 The gunman had planned the attack for months and traveled about 100 miles to Charleston on June 17, 2015, to attack Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the South, because of what it represented, prosecutors said. He told the parishioners he was killing them because blacks were raping white women and taking over the country. In a manifesto found later, he said he hoped to start a race war. 
 
 The attorney for the 22-year-old all but conceded during opening statements that Roof committed the slayings but suggested that he should be spared the death penalty. 
 
 One of three survivors, Sanders said Roof came by the Wednesday night gathering and was given a study sheet and a Bible by the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a state senator. 
 
 When she heard the loud noise, she assumed something was wrong with the electricity. Then she saw the real reason. 
 
 "I screamed he had a gun," she said. But by that time, Pinckney had already been shot. Soon her son was hit. 
 
 "I watched my son come into this world and I watched my son leave this world," she said before becoming so distraught that U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel called a recess. Several people sitting among the survivors' family members and several jurors dabbed away tears. 
 
 Roof, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit, just stared down at the defense table, as he did throughout the day. 
 
 "He just sits there the whole time. Evil, evil, evil as can be," Sanders testified. 
 
 In the prosecution's opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson said Roof had a "cold and hateful heart." 
 
 "He pulled the trigger on that Glock .45 more than 70 times that night. More than 60 times he hit parishioners," the prosecutor said. 
 
 Before the slayings, Roof had posed in photos with the Confederate flag. The attack prompted South Carolina to completely remove the emblem from its Capitol grounds. Other state and local governments voted to take down Confederate monuments, remove the flag from parks or rename government buildings honoring Confederate soldiers. 
 
 If Roof is convicted, the case will move to the penalty phase, where he plans to act as his own lawyer to apparently fight for his life. 
 
 A panel of 12 white jurors, five black jurors and one person of another race were selected, according to court officials who said the alternates will not be picked until the end of the trial. 
 
 Defense attorney David Bruck said the facts of the case are largely undisputed and that he would likely ask few questions of the government witnesses. He may not call any witnesses of his own. 
 
 The defense has said repeatedly in both federal and state court that Roof is willing to plead guilty if capital punishment is taken off the table. Prosecutors have refused. Roof faces another death penalty trial next year in state court. 
 
 Bruck urged jurors to pay attention to the little things and use their common sense to determine what made Roof hate black people so much. He tried to hint at reasons why Roof should not be put to death, but prosecutors objected, saying that was for the penalty phase. The judge agreed. 
 
 Roof's trial began only days after another one with racial overtones ended in a mistrial. Jurors could not agree on a verdict for former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who shot a black man in the back as he was running away from a traffic stop. A bystander recorded the shooting, and it was seen widely on TV and online. 
 
 The church slayings took place a little more than two months after the Slager shooting, and Charleston has stayed mostly calm, unlike other cities where police shootings and perceived racial injustice has rocked communities. 
 
 State prosecutors plan to retry Slager.
– "This is a tragedy that no community should have to experience," Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen told reporters after a mass shooting at a historic black church left nine people dead. "I do believe this was a hate crime," he says of the attack, which is believed to have been carried out by a young white man who is still at large. The president of the Charleston NAACP tells the Post and Courier that a survivor says the gunman briefly sat down in the Emanuel AME Church before opening fire on a prayer meeting, but at a news conference this morning, Mullen said the shooter stuck around for almost an hour before the shooting began, the AP reports. Mullen also distributed a surveillance video of a possible suspect and vehicle, and added that the victims were six females and three males. The NAACP chief says the gunman told one woman he was letting her live so she could tell others what happened. "It is unfathomable that somebody in today's society would walk into a church when people are having a prayer meeting and take their lives," Mullen told reporters. "I can assure you that we're going to do everything in our power to find this individual, to lock him up and to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else." Mayor Joe Riley called the suspect "one hateful person," describing the shooting as "the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine." In other developments: Helicopters are circling Charleston in the search for the suspect, who's described as a white male, around 21 years old, slender, clean-shaven, and wearing a gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and Timberland boots, the Guardian reports. Police say he is "obviously extremely dangerous." State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor, was in the church at the time of the attack, and State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford tells the AP that the lawmaker was among those killed. The 41-year-old "never had anything bad to say about anybody, even when I thought he should," Rutherford says. "He was always out doing work either for his parishioners or his constituents. He touched everybody." The Post and Courier has more on the history of the church, which it calls the "spiritual home to one of the oldest and largest black congregations south of Baltimore," and which many in the city call "Mother Emanuel." Its roots go back to 1816, and it was burned after one of its founders tried to organize a slave revolt in 1822. Members went underground until after the Civil War, when the church adopted the name "Emanuel." Jeb Bush has canceled a Charleston campaign appearance scheduled for today, the New York Times reports. A campaign aide for Hillary Clinton says she was in the city yesterday but left before the shooting.