World shocked at U.S. racism, gun violence

BEIJING — Often the target of U.S. human rights accusations, China wasted little time returning such charges following the mass shooting. Elsewhere around the world, the attack renewed perceptions that Americans have too many guns and have yet to overcome racial tensions.

Some said the attack reinforced their reservations about personal security in the U.S. — particularly as a non-white foreigner — while others said they’d still feel safe if they were to visit.

Especially in Australia and northeast Asia, where firearms are strictly controlled and gun violence almost unheard of, many were baffled by the determination among many Americans to own guns despite repeated mass shootings.

“We don’t understand America’s need for guns,” said Philip Alpers, director of the University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org project that compares gun laws across the world. “It is very puzzling for non-Americans.”

From wire reports

A frontier nation like the U.S., Australia had a similar attitude toward firearms prior to a 1996 mass shooting that killed 35. Soon after, tight restrictions on gun ownership were imposed and no such incidents have been reported since.

A similar effect has been seen elsewhere.

“The USA is completely out of step with the rest of the world. We’ve tightened our gun laws and have seen a reduction,” said Claire Taylor, the director of media and public relations at Gun Free South Africa.

Ahmad Syafi’i Maarif, a prominent Indonesian intellectual and former leader of Muhammadiyah, one of the country’s largest Muslim organizations, said the church shooting shocked many.

“People all over the world believed that racism had gone from the U.S. when Barack Obama was elected to lead the superpower, twice,” he said. “But the Charleston shooting has reminded us that in fact, the seeds of racism still remain and were embedded in the hearts of small communities there, and can explode at any time, like a terrorist act by an individual.”

A 21-year-old white man, Dylann Storm Roof, now faces nine counts of murder for the South Carolina shooting. An acquaintance said Roof had complained that “blacks were taking over the world.”

Many places around the world struggle with racism and prejudice against outsiders, but mass shootings in the U.S., where the Constitution’s second amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, often receive widespread global attention.

“Guns are in their constitution,” said Joanna Leung, a 34-year-old Toronto resident. “I’m pretty sure no one else has anything similar. I never understand why they think gun violence is going to solve anything.”

In Britain, the attack reinforced the view that America has too many guns and too many racists. The front-page headline of The Independent newspaper said simply, “America’s shame.”

The newspaper said in an editorial that America seems to have moved backward in racial relations since Obama’s election, and that the “obscene proliferation of guns only magnifies tragedies” like the church shooting.

The leftist Mexico City newspaper La Jornada said the U.S. has become a “structurally violent state” where force is frequently used domestically and internationally to resolve differences.

“In this context, the unchecked and even paranoid citizen armament is no coincidence: Such a phenomenon reflects the feeling of extensive sectors about the supposed legitimacy of violent methods,” it said.

In China, the official Xinhua News Agency said the violence in South Carolina “mirrors the U.S. government’s inaction on rampant gun violence as well as the growing racial hatred in the country.”

“Unless U.S. President Barack Obama’s government really reflects on his country’s deep-rooted issues like racial discrimination and social inequality and takes concrete actions on gun control, such tragedy will hardly be prevented from happening again,” Xinhua said in an editorial.

On China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service, some users compared the United States to lawless Somalia and said racial discrimination was fueling violence and high crime rates. Many reflected the official view that gun ownership and violent crime are byproducts of Western-style democratic freedoms that are not only unsuited to China but potentially disastrous.

Recalling the recent killings of Chinese and other foreign students in the U.S., office worker Xie Yan said he was still eager to visit the U.S., but would be “extremely careful” there.

Xie said he had heard much about racism in the U.S., but was uncertain about the underlying dynamics.

“We tend to see the U.S. as a violent place, but I don’t think we understand a lot about racism there. Chinese are free to study, visit and live there so it doesn’t feel like we’re discriminated against,” Xu said while waiting for a train on Beijing’s busy subway line 1.

Like Australia, China has had its problems with racial and ethnic discrimination. China is overwhelmingly dominated by one ethnic group, the Han, and activists decry the lack of awareness about discrimination in jobs and housing faced by minorities such as Tibetans and Turkic Muslim Uighurs from the northwest.

Chinese police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics against those labeled separatists or terrorists, although such measures appear to be supported by most Chinese.

In Japan, discrimination tends to be based less on skin color than on national origin, resulting in biases against Chinese and Koreans, said Hiroko Takimoto, 41, a patent attorney in Tokyo.

Racially motivated killings are “simply something Japanese as a people cannot understand,” she said.

Yukari Kato, vice president of the company Ryugaku Journal that assists Japanese students on overseas programs, including about 2,000 in the U.S., said violence there was nothing new and most of the country remained perfectly safe.

“It’s no different from Japan. There are places where you can become a victim of crime. You just have to be prepared to defend yourself,” she said.

However, Yuka Christine Koshino, 21, a political science student at Tokyo’s Keio University, said she was devastated by the shootings, particularly after having participated in racism awareness campaigns while studying at the University of California, Berkeley. Those interactions had given her hope that the situation was improving. The shootings “shocked me,” said Koshino.

Chairman of the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates Max de Mesa shared the sentiment of civil rights activists in South Carolina who pointed out that the Confederate battle flag, the symbol of the pro-slavery South during the Civil War, continued to fly over the state even as it mourned.

“Some of the (old) structures and some of the attitudes remain and they were even nurtured, at least that is being shown now,” de Mesa said.

“That would be no different from a suicide bomber,” he said. “For a jihadist, ‘I will be with Allah if I do that.’ The other says, ‘I am proving white supremacy here.’”

Indonesian intellectual Syafi’i Maarif said he hoped the incident would help Americans stop equating terrorism with Islam.

“Terrorism and radicalism can appear in every strata of society under various guises and in the name of ethnicity, religion and race,” he said.

Athens boy learning science, helping monarch butterfly

ATHENS — An Athens teen is learning how to do science this summer at the University of Georgia and he just might be helping to save the monarch butterfly from extinction.

Working with UGA horticulture professor Paul Thomas, Nick Moon is conducting two summer research projects under the professor’s supervision, much like a graduate student.

Moon is not a graduate student, though, but a rising junior at Cedar Shoals High School participating in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ Young Scholars Internship Program.

The 16-year-old is one of 83 high school students participating this year at UGA campuses in Tifton, Athens and Griffin, said Victoria David, who coordinates the program through the college’s Office of Diversity Relations.

The program is meant to attract students into agriculturally-related education and careers in so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and math.

Each student is paired with a scientist working on real-world problems, like Thomas.

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In one of Moon’s research projects, he’s raising up pole beans, carrots, cucumbers and four other kinds of plants. But some of the plants are getting special treatment. Part of them get a soil product made from compost by the city of Gainesville and others are getting a plant food made from a molasses by-product. Moon wants to know how the plants respond to each treatment.

The second project is part of Thomas’ long-term research on propagating milkweed, which monarch butterflies must have to survive; their caterpillars only eat milkweed plants.

“Without a food source, they will become extinct,” Moon said.

Milkweeds have become scarce, though, with devastating consequences for monarchs. A major reason is widespread agricultural use of a kind of herbicide that kills not only the plants farmers want to keep out of their fields, but innocent bystanders nearby, such as milkweed.

Ill-timed mowing beside highways and loss of habitat are also important reasons why milkweed and the iconic butterfly have declined, Thomas said.

But there’s been a lot in the news recently about the monarch’s plight and many people are trying to help by planting native milkweed species, creating new habitat for the butterflies.

Trouble is, many of them are doing it wrong, Thomas said. He pointed to the planting advice on one website devoted to helping save the monarch. It’s advice that would guarantee 100 percent failure, the horticulture professor said.

Milkweed seeds are wind-dispersed, so they germinate close to the surface, he said. They develop long taproots and often the containers in which they’re sprouted just aren’t deep enough to allow the root to grow properly.

The growing medium they’re sprouted in also may not let the plant get enough water once they’re planted.

Moon is testing two additives that might help the milkweeds grow, including a clay slurry that could help get moisture to their roots.

In another experimental condition, he’s adding a kind of fungus that should help the plants absorb moisture and nutrients, he said.

Moon is also picking up skills that are going to help him in school — statistics, inputting data and explaining the data that he’s gathering.

Each student with a Young Scholars Internship has to prepare a poster explaining what he or she has done, and in early July they’ll all get together to share those posters and tell each other what they’ve learned.

And it’s just been interesting to be able to plant seeds and see them grow, Moon said.

“Learning how to plant these seeds is pretty interesting,” he said. “I’ve never really grown plants before.”

NEW YORK — Somewhere out there are an admitted killer who crawled through a Texas prison’s ventilation ducts, a murderer who apparently escaped from an Indiana institution in a garbage truck, and a Florida convict who got other inmates to put him in a crate at the prison furniture shop and had himself delivered to freedom by truck.

They’re among more than 220 state prison escapees nationwide who are listed as on the loose, The Associated Press found in a coast-to-coast survey.

Most broke out decades ago, meaning the chances of finding them have dwindled dramatically — that is, if they’re even alive.

Still, “you don’t forget about them,” said former Oklahoma corrections chief James Saffle, who worked for 11 years tracking escaped convicts. “Sometimes, some little action they take will trigger something.”

The hunt is still on

For the past two weeks, up to 800 federal, state and local law enforcement officers have been searching the woods and swamps around a maximum-security state prison in far northern New York for two convicted killers who used power tools to break out. The hunt is still in the early and intensive on-the-ground phase.

After sightings wane and the dragnets come up empty, some states regularly revisit escape cases, keep an eye on vanished prisoners’ associates and check fingerprint databases, death certificates or other sources for new leads.

But investigators largely have to hold out hope that they will get a tip out of the blue or that the convict will slip up, perhaps by contacting a relative or getting arrested for another crime.

Successful escapes from secure, fenced prisons are rare. At least 24 states say they have no such prisoners at large.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported about 2,000 state and federal inmates escaped or went off without leave in 2013. But the figure doesn’t indicate how many were caught.

The AP asked all states for a current total of escapees from secure, locked state prisons where they were held full time. California, the most populous state, and Ohio couldn’t immediately provide an answer, and others responded only for recent decades, so the total is almost certainly higher than the 224 the AP counted.

Officials say most of the breakouts are decades old because prisons have become more secure. Some escapees are surely dead. One 1955 absconder from Illinois would now be 112. One escape on Alabama’s list happened in 1929. Maryland’s 90 unsolved escapes date to 1937, many involving the notorious and now-closed Maryland House of Correction, which had a long history of riots and mass breakouts.

Trails go cold

Some fugitives’ whereabouts are no mystery.

Joanne Chesimard was granted asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from the New Jersey prison where the former Black Panther was serving a life sentence in the killing of a state trooper. Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz, the Texas inmate who squeezed through the ventilation system in 2010 to get out of a 35-year sentence for cutting his boss’ throat, is believed to be in Mexico.

But others could be anywhere, as New York officials acknowledged after Richard Matt and David Sweat cut their way out of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, close to the Canadian border, on June 6.

In the early going, law officers can search on the ground and send out a “bolo” — for “be on the lookout for” — through a federal clearinghouse that disseminates alerts electronically to virtually every U.S. criminal justice agency.

Investigators also “have to crawl into the mind of the fugitive,” said Howard Safir, a former U.S. Marshals Service operations chief and New York City police commissioner.

Captures often are quick. But after six months, a fugitive’s trail generally goes pretty cold, said Chuck Jordan, president of the National Association of Fugitive Recovery Agents. Pursuing decades-old cases is complicated by the difficulties of working with paper records and the passage of time.

Prison systems say they keep pushing.

Michigan said it reviews all escapees’ cases every six months and runs their fingerprints through databases every few years in the hope of a match. The Ohio State Highway Patrol checks criminal records, death certificates and social media annually for clues on cold cases, spokesman Lt. Craig Cvetan said.

“You don’t say, ‘Well, if we haven’t found the person by five years, we’re not going to do anything else with it,’” he said.

A convicted killer who escaped from a California prison work camp in 1975 was arrested in 2011 after authorities heard his dying mother had sought to contact him. They checked her phone records. A 1977 fugitive from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was caught last year after facial-recognition technology matched an old photo of him with the present-day Florida driver’s license he obtained under an alias. A North Carolina thief who spent four decades on the run simply called Kentucky authorities in April, saying he wanted “to get this behind me.”

“Nobody lives on an island,” Safir said. “It’s very hard not to leave some trail these days.”

FUGITIVE IN A FURNITURE CRATE: The first time Florida inmate Glen Stark Chambers escaped, he and two other inmates used bedsheets to shimmy down the side of a Sarasota jail. He was being held there briefly after being convicted in his girlfriend’s 1975 beating death. All three escapees were soon caught. Chambers was found hiding in a nearby mine and sent back behind bars to continue facing execution. A court later lowered Chambers’ sentence to life in prison, but he wasn’t sticking around. While making office furniture at a state prison in February 1990, Chambers got other inmates to box him inside a crate and load it onto a truck, authorities said. After the truck left the prison, Chambers hopped out before the driver realized anyone was inside. Officials later found his clothes in the vehicle. Authorities say Chambers, who’s 64 if still alive, has been spotted in Florida and Alabama since his escape.

VANISHED THROUGH VENTILATION DUCTS: Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz was serving 35 years for killing his boss when he and another inmate slipped into ventilation ducts in the wall of a Texas prison furniture factory in April 2010. They crawled through the ducts, then cut through a razor-wire-topped fence about 25 yards away, before authorities realized the two were missing from their jobs at the furniture factory. It wasn’t clear what they used to cut the fence — the furniture factory’s tools all were accounted for — and officials concluded they had gotten a ride from someone after clearing the fence. Bustos-Diaz had been 16 when he slashed a Houston-area horse stable owner’s throat in 2005. Bustos-Diaz, who worked for the victim, was prosecuted as an adult and pleaded guilty to murder. Authorities believe Bustos-Diaz, now 26 if still alive, is in Mexico. The inmate who escaped with him was captured in the border town of McAllen, Texas, in August 2010.

CHRISTMAS EVE BREAKOUT: Priscilla Frey had been in prison for under six months when she and two other inmates broke out of a Kansas prison on Christmas Eve 1974. Their plan wasn’t complex: They climbed an 8-foot fence and ran. Frey’s path to prison began with an arrest on charges of forging a check at a shoe store in Hutchinson, Kansas. She skipped bail, got into trouble with the law in Maryland, was extradited back to Kansas and was sentenced to serve up to 10 years for the forgery and up to five years for failing to appear in court. The other two escapees were later apprehended, but Frey was never found. She’s now 65 if still alive.

TAKING TRUCKS: STEALING ONE, AND STOWING AWAY: Former furniture restorer Philip Sadowski was serving a 40-year sentence when he broke out of a Montana prison in July 1996 by stealing a pickup truck from a prison logging crew. He was 60 at the time. He’d been convicted of deliberate homicide for shooting a man after a night of drinking with people visiting Sadowski’s woodworking shop at his home near Bozeman in 1989. The truck was found six months later, its license plates switched with another vehicle’s. But Sadowski’s whereabouts are unknown. Larry Woods also took a truck — hiding in a garbage hauler — to escape from an Indiana prison in July 2001, authorities believe. Woods, then 28, was serving a 60-year sentence after being convicted of murdering an Indianapolis restaurant manager. He’d been fairly free to move about the prison because he worked as an inmate groundskeeper. Authorities have suggested Woods might have been crushed to death by the garbage truck’s compactor. They searched a local landfill for a week after his escape, but no body was ever found.

INFAMOUS NEBRASKA BREAKOUT: William Leslie Arnold was one of Nebraska’s most notorious prisoners. As a 16-year-old in 1958, he’d led police to his parents’ graves in their Omaha backyard and said he’d shot them dead because of a quarrel over use of the family car. Nine years later, he and another inmate broke out by cutting through window bars in a prison music room and scaling a 12-foot, barbed-wire-topped fence. His fellow escapee was captured in Los Angeles in 1968 and told investigators he and Arnold had gone together to Chicago and split up there. Arnold, who went by Les, has never been found. But a piece of the puzzle emerged as recently as 2006, when a retired minister told the Lincoln Journal Star that on the night of the July 1967 breakout, he picked up the two escapees at a bowling alley, drove them to a bus station and bought them tickets to Chicago. The minister had known Arnold since childhood and said when the escaped convict called for help, he didn’t think about the fact that providing aid would break the law: “I was thinking about a friend in need.”

MASSENA, N.Y. — A cruise ship taking European tourists to Ontario, Canada, crashed into a wall while entering a lock on the St. Lawrence Seaway in northern New York, injuring 19 passengers and three crew members, officials said Friday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the 286-foot Saint Laurent was headed from Montreal to Toronto when it hit a wall in the Eisenhower Lock in Massena, near the Canadian border, shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday. There were 273 people on board, including 81 crew members and 192 passengers who are mainly French and Swiss nationals.

The ship’s operator, Miami-based FleetPro, said 19 passengers and three crew members were treated at Massena Memorial Hospital and released. The company said all the injuries were minor.

The Saint Laurent was entering the lock when it struck an approach wall bumper, according to Petty Officer 2nd Class Lauren Laughlin of the Coast Guard’s Cleveland-based Ninth District, which covers the St. Lawrence River and the seaway. The impact punched a hole in the ship’s hull, causing it to take on water, she said.

The lock’s doors were closed and the water drained out so the boat wouldn’t sink, Laughlin said. A salvage crew and Coast Guard team were assessing the damage Friday to determine how best to move the vessel, she said.

The Washington, D.C.-based Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. said the ship is stable and the uninjured passengers remained on board overnight. The agency that operates the international shipping route said seven commercial vessels are backed up in the seaway because of the accident. There was no immediate estimate on when the lock would reopen.

FleetPro, formerly International Shipping Partners, said all shipboard services are fully functional for passengers. The company said the ship was a day into a 10-day roundtrip excursion out of Montreal, with stops in between, when the accident occurred.

The passengers were disembarking the ship at the lock Friday afternoon and put on buses that would take them back to Montreal. The company said it didn’t know yet if the trip to Toronto would be resumed.

The Saint Laurent is owned by Nassau, Bahamas-based Adventurer Owner Ltd.

The crash remains under investigation.

S.C.’s jobless rate rises slightly

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s unemployment rate increased slightly last month, even though more people were working, the Department of Employment and Workforce said Friday.

The jobless rate increased from 6.7 percent of the workforce in April to 6.8 percent in May.

The number of people working in the state last month reached a record estimate of nearly 2,110,000, up about 65,000 from the number of people working in May 2014.

The national unemployment rate was 5.5 percent in May.

The Associated Press

The trade, transportation and utilities sector had the biggest job loss last month, with 3,200 fewer jobs in May compared with April.

Both the manufacturing and the health and education sectors showed increases of 800 jobs in May, compared with April.

Allendale County had the largest jobless rate at 11.6 percent. Charleston County had the lowest rate at 5.4 percent. Unlike the statewide figures, the local figures are not adjusted for seasonal factors.

The state’s labor force increased to about 2,260,000 in May. It was the 16th consecutive monthly increase in the number of workers available.

Only a handful of states had a higher unemployment rate than South Carolina last month, including Nevada at 7 percent, West Virginia at 7.2 percent and the District of Columbia at 7.3 percent.

Cat wins shelter’s Hero Dog award for saving kid from canine

LOS ANGELES — For the first time, a Los Angeles shelter’s Hero Dog award has gone to a cat.

In May 2014, Tara the cat fought off a dog that attacked her 6-year-old owner as he rode his bicycle in the driveway of the family’s Bakersfield home.

Tara body-slammed Scrappy, a chow-mix that lived next door, when the dog got out of his yard, ran for Jeremy Triantafilo, grabbed his leg and started shaking from side-to-side. Tara chased the dog toward its home. It was later euthanized.

Jeremy, who is autistic and had to have eight stitches, calls Scrappy a “bad dog,” said his dad, Roger Triantafilo. About Tara, Jeremy said, “She is my hero.”

“We were so impressed by Tara’s bravery and fast action that the selection committee decided that a cat this spectacular should be the National Hero Dog,” said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles. The shelter’s 33rd annual award was presented to the family in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.

You will usually find Tara close to Jeremy, his father said.

“The neighbor kids come over and play with her. Dogs walk by all the time. She gets along fine with our dog, Maya. But if Jeremy falls off his bike, she comes running. If he starts crying, she comes running,” Triantafilo said.

He believes Tara would help Jeremy’s twin brothers, Carson and Conner, if they needed it. She’s grown up with all of them. But there is no question she is partial to Jeremy, he said. Jeremy and Tara spend a lot of time walking around and talking with one another.

Footage of Tara’s heroics, from home security videos, made her an international celebrity when Triantafilo put it on YouTube. It’s gotten more than 650,000 hits so far.

There was one alteration in the trophy: the word “Dog” was scratched out and the word “Cat” etched in.

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — Tropical Depression Bill dumped up to 7 inches of rain on the Ozarks in southern Missouri overnight, causing flash floods that forced the evacuation of some towns and campgrounds and increasing the risk of major flooding along several rivers.

The system that came ashore Tuesday along the Texas Gulf Coast, slowly made its way north into northern Arkansas and southern Missouri on Friday. The timing was unfortunate: The region has been swamped by heavy rain for several days, and Bill only made things worse.

“We had some ridiculous rainfall totals,” said Mike Griffin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri.

How much? Some areas near Springfield received 5 to 7 inches of rain between sunset Thursday and sunrise Friday — and it continued to come down. Parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana got up to 4 inches of rain.

And the downpours were set to continue. As the storm pushes eastward, “it’s slowly weakening and losing its punch. But it’s still going to cause a lot of rain,” Griffin said.

Flash floods were common. In Steelville, Missouri, a mobile home park was evacuated along the normally docile Yadkin Creek. Crawford County emergency management coordinator Lesa Mizell said the creek is usually about 1 foot deep. At 5 a.m. Friday, “it looked like a roaring river,” she said.

In nearby Laclede County, several popular campgrounds along the Gasconade River were evacuated as the waterway quickly rose. Emergency coordinator Randy Rowe said one driver had to be rescued when a flash flood swept his car off the road.

Flood waters lapped at the Cuivre River bridge near Troy, Missouri, 50 miles north of St. Louis, by midday Friday, forcing the temporary closure of U.S. 61. Hours earlier, firefighters rescued three people trapped in a home alongside the flooding river, and saved three others from vehicles submerged in flood waters.

Record flooding was forecast along the James River near Springfield. The river was at 5 feet Thursday evening — and 22.2 feet Friday afternoon, two-tenths of a foot above the previous high-water mark set in 1909. The good news was that few, if any, homes were likely to be flooded.

The weather service projects major flooding on the Mississippi River from just south of St. Louis, down through the Missouri Bootheel. The Army Corps of Engineers dispatched flood-fighting teams to southeast Missouri and southern Illinois to watch for levee trouble and to aid communities.

Buyouts since the 1993 flood have removed most homes from harm’s way, but scattered evacuations are likely along the Mississippi.

Phil Thompson, who lives in tiny Allenville in southeast Missouri, said some of his neighbors have evacuated with the river rising. Not him.

“There’s always some of us that stay, just to guard the town,” Thompson said.

Allenville, with about 100 residents, sits high enough to be safe, but roads leading to town are in danger of flooding.

“In 1993 and 1995 we were an island for six weeks each,” Thompson said. “It just cuts our roads off — we can’t get in or out.”

In central Illinois, the Illinois River was about 10 feet above flood stage in Havana and Beardstown. Sandbagging operations were underway in several towns in northwest Indiana, including threatened subdivisions along the Kankakee River.

Rains drenched much of Indiana on Friday. Forecasters predicted up to 5 inches of rain could fall through Sunday. By midday, Bloomington had already received more than 2 inches of rain.

Some residents voluntarily evacuated their mobile homes at a park in Rensselaer, Indiana, near the Iroquois River. That river reached a record high this week, and authorities were concerned that more rain could cause the water level to rise even more.

At least one death is blamed on Bill’s slow trek across the country. A 2-year-old boy was swept from his father’s arms Thursday as they tried to escape a flash flood at Hickory Creek in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Jeremiah Mayer’s body was found about 30 yards from that spot.

Further north, near Macomb, Oklahoma, authorities on Thursday evening recovered the body of an 80-year-old woman from a car partially submerged in floodwaters, Pottawatomie County Undersheriff Travis Palmer told the Shawnee News-Star. Her official cause of death has not yet been determined.

ISTANBUL — WikiLeaks is in the process of publishing more than 500,000 Saudi diplomatic documents to the Internet, the transparency website said Friday, a move that echoes its famous release of U.S. State Department cables in 2010.

WikiLeaks said in a statement that it has already posted roughly 60,000 files. Most of them appear to be in Arabic.

There was no immediate way to verify the authenticity of the documents, although WikiLeaks has a long track record of hosting large-scale leaks of government material. Many of the documents carried green letterhead marked “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” or “Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Some were marked “urgent” or “classified.” At least one appeared to be from the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

If genuine, the documents would offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the notoriously opaque kingdom. They might also shed light on Riyadh’s longstanding regional rivalry with Iran, its support for Syrian rebels and Egypt’s military-backed government, and its opposition to an emerging international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.

One of the documents, dated to 2012, appears to highlight Saudi Arabia’s well-known skepticism about the Iranian nuclear talks. A message from the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran to the Foreign Ministry in Riyadh describes “flirting American messages” being carried to Iran via an unnamed Turkish mediator.

Another 2012 missive, this time sent from the Saudi Embassy in Abu Dhabi, said the United Arab Emirates was putting “heavy pressure” on the Egyptian government not to try former president Hosni Mubarak, who had been overthrown in a popular uprising the year before.

Some of the concerns appear specific to Saudi Arabia.

In an Aug. 14, 2008, message marked “classified and very urgent,” the Foreign Ministry wrote to the Saudi Embassy in Washington to warn that dozens of students from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries had visited the Israeli Embassy in the U.S. capital as part of an international leadership program.

“They listened to diplomats’ briefings from the embassy employees, they asked questions and then they took pictures,” the message said, asking the embassy for a speedy update on the situation.

Another eye-catching item was a document addressed to the interior and justice ministers notifying them that a son of Osama bin Laden had obtained a certificate from the American Embassy in Riyadh “showing (the) death of his father.”

Many more of the dozens of documents examined by The Associated Press appeared to be the product of mundane administrative work, such as emails about setting up a website or operating an office fax machine.

The AP was able to partially verify a handful of documents’ authenticity by calling the telephone numbers included in many of them. WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told AP he was confident that the material was genuine.

It is not clear how WikiLeaks got the documents.

In its statement, WikiLeaks said the release coincided with the three-year anniversary of its founder, Julian Assange, seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Assange took refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about alleged sex crimes. Assange has denied any wrongdoing.

LONDON — A man was in critical condition in a London hospital after he was found stowed away in the undercarriage of a plane that had just completed a 10-hour flight, and police are investigating whether a man found dead on a west London rooftop fell from the same plane.

Authorities at Heathrow Airport found the man in the undercarriage of a British Airways plane after it landed Thursday morning on a flight from Johannesburg. Police say they believe they know his identity and that he is 24 but they are awaiting confirmation before they release any details.

While there is no evidence to link the two cases, police say they are looking into whether there is a connection to the body found an hour later in the west London community of Richmond, which is below the flight path.

British Airways said it is working with police in London and Johannesburg to establish the facts in this “rare case.”

Experts believe roughly three-quarters of stowaways do not survive if they hide on a plane’s undercarriage because of the extreme cold and lack of oxygen they experience as the plane reaches cruising altitude. Though not common, stowaways have in the past plunged to the streets of west London as planes lowered their landing gear.

In September 2012, a 30-year old from Mozambique, Jose Matada, died after falling from the undercarriage of a Heathrow-bound flight from Angola onto a street in Mortlake, which is not far from where the body was found Thursday.

An inquest into his death suggested he had survived freezing temperatures of up to minus 76 degrees for most of the 12-hour flight, but he was believed to be dead or nearly dead by the time he hit the ground.

Aviation expert Chris Yates described the latest situation as unusual because of enhanced security measures at airports meant to deter terror and other attacks. However, he noted that stowaways who survive have tended to be young people.

The Rev. Neil Summers, from the St John the Divine of Richmond church across the way from where the body was found, said he would lead prayers for the dead man.

“In one sense it’s not totally surprising as it’s happened before,” he said. “It’s very shocking when it’s so close to you. We are going to say prayers for the people concerned tonight.”

CHARLESTON, S.C. — They forgave him. They advised him to repent for his sins, and asked for God’s mercy on his soul. One even told Dylann Storm Roof to repent and confess, and “you’ll be OK.”

Relatives of the nine community leaders shot down during a Bible study session at their historic black church confronted the shooting suspect Friday during his initial court hearing, and spoke of love.

“I forgive you, my family forgives you,” said Anthony Thompson. “We would like you to take this opportunity to repent. ... Do that and you’ll be better off than you are right now.”

Roof, who faces nine counts of murder, was ordered held on a $1 million bond on a separate gun charge. He appeared by video from the county jail, looking somber in a striped jumpsuit and speaking only briefly in response to the judge’s questions.

A police affidavit released Friday accused Roof of shooting all nine victims multiple times, and making a “racially inflammatory statement” as he stood over an unnamed witness.

Felecia Sanders survived the Wednesday night attack by pretending to be dead, but lost her son Tywanza. She also spoke from the judge’s courtroom, where Roof’s image appeared on a television screen.

“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautifulest people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts ... and I’ll never be the same,” Sanders told Roof.

“Tywanza was my hero,” Sanders said, but even she showed some kindness as she confronted the man accused of killing her son: “As we said in Bible Study, we enjoyed you but may God have mercy on you.”

Roof, 21, bowed his head slightly as the relatives spoke. From the jail, he could hear the people talking, but couldn’t see them, because the camera shows only the judge.

“Charleston is a very strong community. We have big hearts. We’re a very loving community,” said Gosnell, who urged people to find it in their hearts to help not only the nine victims, but “victims on the young man’s side of the family” as well.

Roof’s public defender released a statement from his family offering prayers and sympathy for the victims, and expressing “shock, grief and disbelief as to what happened that night.”

“We have all been touched by the moving words from the victims’ families offering God’s forgiveness and love in the face of such horrible suffering,” the statement said.

‘A sacred place’

The remarkable comments seemed in keeping with a spirit evident on the streets of Charleston Friday, where people built a memorial and planned a vigil to repudiate whatever a gunman would hope to accomplish by attacking the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s most important African-American sanctuaries.

“A hateful person came to this community with some crazy idea he’d be able to divide, but all he did was unite us and make us love each other even more,” Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said as he described plans for the evening vigil at a sports arena.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said the state will “absolutely” want the death penalty.

A steady stream of people brought flowers and notes and shared somber thoughts at a growing memorial in front of the church, which President Barack Obama called “a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.”

“This was an act of racial terrorism and must be treated as such,” the Rev. Cornell William Brooks, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Friday in Charleston.

Roof had complained while getting drunk on vodka recently that “blacks were taking over the world” and that “someone needed to do something about it for the white race,” according to Joey Meek, who tipped the FBI when he saw his friend on surveillance images.

Roof also told him he used birthday money from his parents to buy a .45 Glock pistol before the attack, Meek said. The affidavit said Roof’s father and uncle also called authorities after seeing surveillance photos, and that the father said Roof owned a .45-caliber gun.

Brooks said hate crimes take aim at collective values, but “we have never allowed ourselves to be victims, we have never capitulated, we have never laid prostate before the demagogue of racism in this country.”

“This is a moment in which we say to them, the white nationalists movement, those purveyors of hate, we as Americans will not subscribe to that philosophy. We will not give up, we will not give in,” he said.

The victims

Roof was arrested in North Carolina after an alert motorist recognized him, and returned in shackles to a county jail where he was being held next to the cell of Michael Slager, the white former police officer charged with fatally shooting black motorist Walter Scott in neighboring North Charleston.

It was the third arrest for Roof, who was quizzed by police in February after workers at the Columbiana shopping mall said he appeared dressed entirely in black, asking strange questions about employee movements and closing times. He was charged then with possessing suboxone, a drug typically used to treat heroin addiction.

The victims of the church shooting included Clementa Pinckney, 41, a state senator who doubled as the church’s lead pastor, Cynthia Hurd, 54; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, 70; Susie Jackson, 87; and the reverends DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49; Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45; and Daniel Simmons Sr., 74.

TIMELINE OF THE SHOOTING IN CHARLESTON

WEDNESDAY

8:06 p.m.: Dylann Roof arrives at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a dark Hyundai sedan. He enters the church through a side entrance and spends about an hour with parishioners attending a Bible study.

About 9 p.m.: The gunman pulls out a concealed handgun and begins shooting, killing nine parishioners. A police document says he stood over a witness and made a racially inflammatory remark. He then exits the building.

9:33 p.m.: Charleston police post a tweet saying they are responding to a shooting at the church.

10:40 p.m.: Police describe the suspect in a tweet as a white male, approximately 21 years old, slender build and wearing a gray sweat shirt, blue jeans, Timberland boots and clean shaven.

THURSDAY

12:45 a.m.: Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley confirms that nine people are dead in a shooting at the church.

3 a.m.: South Carolina House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford says state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was pastor of the church, was among the people killed.

3:35 a.m.: Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen says the FBI will be involved in the investigation and that police consider the shooting a hate crime.

6:10 a.m.: Police say they have surveillance video of a possible suspect and vehicle in the shooting. They distribute the information about the suspect and the vehicle around the country.

7:05 a.m.: Mullen says the victims in the shooting were six females and three males.

8 a.m.: The city of Charleston opens an assistance center for families of the victims.

10:38 a.m.: Police identify the suspect as 21-year-old Dylann Roof of Lexington, South Carolina. An intense manhunt is underway for Roof. Police release surveillance video photographs of the gunman and a black Hyundai sedan he may have used to get away.

11:22 a.m.: Court records show that the suspect has a drug case pending against him after an arrest at a shopping mall in Columbia, South Carolina, in February, as well as a trespassing charge.

11:32 a.m.: U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the suspect is in custody.

11:48 a.m.: The police chief in Charleston says the suspect has been apprehended in North Carolina. A florist named Debbie Dills had been on her way to work Thursday morning when she noticed a black Hyundai next to her at a stoplight. She called her boss who contacted Shelby police who arrested Roof.

12:27 p.m.: Officials say they don’t know the suspect’s motive, but the Charleston mayor calls it “pure, pure concentrated evil.”

12:30 p.m.: President Barack Obama expresses anger, sadness and heartache at the church shooting that left nine dead. He says it shows the need for a national reckoning on gun violence in America.

3:18 p.m.: The names of those killed are released. They are: State Sen. Clementa Pinckney 41; Cynthia Hurd, 54; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Sharonda Singleton, 45; Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, 70; Susie Jackson, 87; the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74; and DePayne Doctor, 49.

4:55 p.m.: A friend of Roof’s, Joseph Meek Jr., says that Roof had told him recently that black people were taking over the world and that something needed to be done for the white race.

5:20 p.m.: A court official in North Carolina says the extradition hearing for the suspect in the fatal shooting of nine people at the historic black church lasted just 10 minutes, and he waived his right to counsel.

7 p.m.: North Carolina authorities say Roof has been transferred into FBI custody and is being flown to South Carolina to face charges.

7:44 p.m.: Charleston police say Roof is in the state and will be held at the Al Cannon Detention Center, and a bond hearing is pending.

FRIDAY

7:15 a.m.: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says the gunman in the Emanuel AME shootings should get the death penalty.

9:56 a.m.: Police in Charleston say the suspect in the church shootings is charged with nine counts of murder and a weapon charge.

12:15 p.m.: Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. says a fund has been set up to help the families of the nine victims, as well as the church itself.

1 p.m.: The head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is calling the slaying of nine people inside the church an act of “racial terrorism” and says the Confederate flag flying on the South Carolina Capitol grounds in Columbia needs to come down.

1:42 p.m.: Charleston County sheriff’s Maj. Eric Watson says Roof is being held in a cell next to Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer who fatally shot a black man on April 4 as he was running away from him. The shooting was recorded on a bystander’s cellphone.

2:27 p.m.: Roof makes his first court appearance, with the relatives of all the victims making tearful statements. A judge sets bond at $1 million for the weapons charge but doesn’t have the authority to set bond on the nine murder counts. That is left up to a circuit judge at a later date.

4:25 p.m.: The chief prosecutor in Charleston County says he wants to talk to the families of the victims and review the evidence before making any decision on whether to seek the death penalty against Roof.

NEW ORLEANS — A handcuffed prisoner in a moving police cruiser managed to grab a gun, fatally shoot the officer at the wheel and escape from the vehicle, which careened into a utility pole at a busy intersection, police said Saturday.

Officer Daryle Holloway, 45, died at a hospital, police chief Michael Harrison said. Meanwhile, an intense manhunt was on for Travis Boys, 33, the suspect who had been arrested on an aggravated assault charge and was being taken to jail when he escaped.

The New Orleans Crimestoppers organization announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to Boys’ arrest.

Rifle-toting police in bullet-proof vests, some with trained canines, searched whole blocks of one neighborhood about a mile from the city’s French Quarter Sunday afternoon. Residents clustered on street corners to watch as officers checked backyards and squinted under modest homes elevated on flood-protection piers.

“He will be caught and he will be brought to justice for the murder of Officer Holloway and for this assault on our entire community,” Harrison said in a police department statement.

The shooting happened Saturday morning as Boys was handcuffed in the back seat of the vehicle. Boys managed to get his hands from behind his back to the front and obtain a weapon as well, Harrison told reporters at the scene in a video interview posted on the department’s Facebook page.

Boys got to the front seat through an opening in the cage that separates front and back seats and shot Holloway, Harrison said.

“Officer Holloway put up a fight to try to get the subject to not exit the vehicle but succumbed to his injuries,” Harrison said.

Department spokesman Tyler Gamble said police were trying to determine what weapon Boys used and how he obtained it, but do not believe Boys used the officer’s gun.

John Polk, who lives around the corner from where the police SUV came to rest, said he was just awakening when he heard a loud noise and his power went out. The noise, he figured, was an electrical transformer blowing.

“I look out the door — I’d heard the boom — I see the fire truck here on the corner,” he said. It was only 45 minutes later, after police had swarmed into the area that he learned what happened.

A helicopter circled overhead as marked and unmarked units from state police and other law enforcement agencies cruised the side streets. Utility workers worked to replace the downed power pole.

State police, St. Tammany Parish deputies, Housing Authority of New Orleans police and the U.S. Marshals Service were among those searching for Boys.

Police seeking Boys halted traffic Saturday into an area of several city blocks of the St. Roch neighborhood not far from where the shooting occurred. Officers kept people from entering the area, and others from leaving.

Vincent Alexander, a prep cook at Margaritaville restaurant in the French Quarter, said he was walking home from work when police detoured him a short distance from his house. “I just called my roommate. They’re not letting him get out the house.”

Holloway had been a member of the New Orleans Police Department since 1992. He was the father of three children.

Harrison said Holloway was not the arresting officer but was transporting Boys to a jail when the shooting occurred.

Harrison said he met with two of those children and Holloway’s former wife at the hospital after he died. “As a new chief, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” said Harrison, who became chief last year.

He said he had known Holloway for 23 years and described him as “a great police officer.”

Mayor Mitch Landrieu decried the killing as “the lowest of the low” and called on the public to help police with information on Boys’ whereabouts.

“Killing an officer in the line of duty is an attack on our community that will not stand,” Landrieu said in a statement. “The heart and soul of New Orleans is heavy today as our community mourns one of our city’s finest.”

The last New Orleans Police Department officer killed in the line of duty was Officer Rodney Thomas on July 7, 2013, according to Gamble. More recently, a Housing Authority police officer, James Bennett Jr., 45, was found shot to death in his patrol car.

Speed, the 150-year-old tortoise, dies at zoo

SAN DIEGO — One of San Diego’s oldest residents has died.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Galapagos tortoise known as Speed has been euthanized at an estimated age of more than 150 years.

Speed had been living at the San Diego Zoo since 1933. He was brought to California as part of an early effort to preserve the endangered species from the Volcan Cerro Azul Island of the Galapagos Islands, off Ecuador.

The massive tortoise had been in geriatric decline for some time. Keepers treated his arthritis and other maladies with medication, hydrotherapy, physical therapy and acupuncture.

Speed was known in his younger years as an alpha male who would butt heads with other males in dominance skirmishes.

Thirteen Galapagos tortoises still remain at the zoo.

DALLAS — A long-standing Texas law that has sent about 100,000 students a year to criminal court — and some to jail — for missing school is off the books, though a Justice Department investigation into one county’s truancy courts continues.

Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a measure to decriminalize unexcused absences and require school districts to implement preventive measures. It will take effect Sept. 1.

Reform advocates say the threat of a heavy fine — up to $500 plus court costs — and a criminal record wasn’t keeping children in school and was sending those who couldn’t pay into a criminal justice system spiral. Under the old law, students as young as 12 could be ordered to court for three unexcused absences in four weeks. Schools were required to file a misdemeanor failure to attend school charge against students with more than 10 unexcused absences in six months. And unpaid fines landed some students behind bars when they turned 17.

“Most of the truancy issues involve hardships,” state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, said. “To criminalize the hardships just doesn’t solve anything. It costs largely low-income families. It doesn’t address the root causes.”

Only two states in the U.S. — Texas and Wyoming — send truants to adult criminal court. In 2013, Texas prosecuted about 115,000 cases, more than twice the number of truancy cases filed in juvenile courts of all other states, according to a report from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed. An estimated $10 million was collected from court costs and fines from students for truancy in fiscal year 2014 alone, the Texas Office of Court Administration said.

Texas Appleseed says the policies disproportionately affected low-income, Hispanic, black and disabled students. The group was also among several groups that filed a U.S. Justice Department complaint about Dallas County’s specialty truancy courts, which in 2012 prosecuted more than 36,000 cases, more than any other Texas county. The Justice Department in March began looking into whether students had received due process, something spokeswoman Dena Iverson said will continue as the department evaluates the new legislation’s impact.

In 12 of the state’s largest 15 counties, Texas Appleseed told The Associated Press, at least 1,283 teenagers were jailed for failure to attend school from January 2013 through April 2015. At least 910 of them spent at least one night in jail.

Peyton Walker’s absences began piling up in seventh grade as she suffered from depression, anxiety and migraines, she said. After missing a court date in Dallas County truancy court at the age of 12, she said she was arrested and handcuffed at school in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite. Walker said the legal situation just made things worse.

“It was more: No matter if I go (to school) or not, I’m going to go to court anyway,” said now 18-year-old Walker, who graduated from high school this spring. She and her mother, who is on disability, still have $2,000 in pending fines, and Walker won’t be able to get a driver’s license until they are paid.

All past truancy convictions will be expunged under the new law. But what will happen to students’ pending fines will be up to the courts to decide, said David Slayton, executive director of the Texas Judicial Council.

Districts will still have the option of sending students with 10 unexcused absences over six months to court, but it will be civil court, with treatment and community service among the sentencing options.

“I feel like they need to find what is really going on before they send these students to court,” said Natasha Holloway, who has six children and spent a night in jail for failure to pay fines related to their absences.

Her 16-year-old daughter Natod’ja Washington had about 20 unexcused absences — which she blamed on lacking a doctor’s note and school activities, among other things — when she was summoned to a Dallas County truancy court this spring. Holloway, a hair stylist, didn’t have an attorney and Googled advice on how her daughter should plead. Washington pleaded no contest and was fined $180, which her mother paid.

Students’ fines for not completing their sentence will not exceed $100 under the new law. And though parents can still be charged with a misdemeanor under the new law, the fines are now graduated, with $100 for the first offense instead of up to $500.

“Anything is better than what it was,” said Rose Comeaux, a single mother of four in the Houston area who has fines totaling about $2,600 for her children’s absences for reasons such as being tardy between classes, missing school during and after pregnancy and missing the bus.

Comeaux, who earns $9 an hour working for a cable company, said she has lost out on better jobs because arrest warrants were issued for her failure to pay. Her 16-year-old daughter, Taqayisha, was fined $395 this spring for missing school after staying home with her 2-year-old when daycare fell through.

“I know some teenagers skip school,” Comeaux said, “but some teenagers have good excuses to why they can’t attend school.”

Each year, the Savannah Morning News presents a list of all the graduating seniors from private and public high schools in Savannah and Chatham County.

Here’s when you can expect to see the names of graduates from these schools:

May 24: Bethesda Academy, Chatham Academy, Memorial Day School

May 31: Savannah Christian Preparatory School, Calvary Day School, Bible Baptist School, Benedictine Military School, Habersham School

June 7: Early College, Savannah Country Day School, St. Andrew’s School, St. Vincent’s Academy, Jenkins High School

June 14: Savannah High School, Woodville-Tompkins

Today: Johnson High School, Groves High School, Beach High School, Windsor Forest High School, New Hampstead High School, Islands High School, Savannah Arts Academy

Johnson High School

Khalil Abdullah

Ashlyn Agyemang

Taheira Alexander

Aliyah Anderson

Hydeia Anthony

Jarius Armstead

Jacorey Baker

Jailyn Baker

Monaeja’ Baker

Tanisha Baker

Dominic Bartley

Kalein Beckett

Antonio Blake, Jr.

Xavier Blake

Tybriesia Blocker

Ja’Lise Bonds

E’Monnie Bostick

Aissa Bowens

Corey Bowers

Samuel Boyd

JaBariee Branham

Alexis Brinkley

Timethy Brinson

Cecilia Broadnax

Maya Broomfield

Bianca Brown

DeVante’ Brown

Malik Brown

Raven Brown

Tamara Brown

Tiree Brown

Na’Qari Bryant

Ashley Bush

Duarrell Bush

Shanika Capers

Jashaun Carter

Brianna Chisholm

Jeffrey Cintron, Jr.

DaRonshay Coleman

Sharisse Coleman

Jordan Colley

Jordan Cooper

Daisha Cross

Kristin Daniels

Jasmine Davis

Brittany Demery

Keith Demery

Cierra Duval

Brian Easley, Jr.

Maya Ebanks

Janae’ Emerson

Diamond’ Evans

Davia Ferguson

Pria Ferguson

La’Shonta Flemming

Hakizimana Foreman

Mikella Frazier

Michelle Garcia

Alexis Gardner

Cedrick Gardner

Sheyenne Garr

Alicia Georgia

Ja’Bria Goodine

Faith Gordon

Mauqice Gordon

Tremell Grady

Christin Grant

Laterris Grant

Tiana Grant

Angel Gray

Monica Green

Raquan Green

Michael Gregory, Jr.

Vernon Grimes, Jr.

Darren Handy

Maurice Hagan

Adrianna Hanebrink

Dayshia Harris

Justin Hawkins

Ivory Henderson

Naeem Hendricks

Jasmyne Hester

Brandon Hicks

Brandon Hilton

Avionna Hollerman

Trenton Howell

Jacquan Hunt

Crystal Hunter

Alexis Christiana Jackson

Brittney Jackson

Matthew Jackson, Jr.

Tyrell Jackson

Dedric Jenkins

Dynaha Jenkins

Daryn Johnson

Shantel Johnson

Edwin Jones, Jr.

JaQuana Jones

Tyre Jones

Renae Kelly

Samuel Kinlaw

Kaylin Kiser

Kaneesha Knight

Charles Knighton, Jr.

William Lawton

Shameka Lawyer

Alexcia LeCount

Nathaniel LeCount

Malasha Leeks

Dinasia Lewis

Kemon Marshall

Emmanuel Martin

Antwan Maxwell

Tamera Melton

Darius Miller

Marissa Mitchell

Mary Moore

Dushad Morris

Dietrecia Myers

Adrienne Ndubueze

Ijeoma Odimgbe

Willie Pleasant

Marshall Rawl, Jr.

Dion Malik Reeves

Ni’Yokia Rhett

Karneisha Rivers

Derrick Roberson, Jr.

Abe Robinson

Alexis Robinson

Bryan Robinson

Divine Robinson

Jamile Robinson Jr.

Aquilla Ross

Latavia Ross

Brittany Sanders

Yumani Sanders

Scarlett Shepherd

Brae’ Simmons

Bryan Simmons

Rose Simmons

Monica Small

Joseff Orion Smith

Melisa Rena’ Smith

Shannon O. Smith, Jr.

Terica Lashae Smith

Joseph Stevens, Jr.

Shanequia Stevens

Andrea Stokes

Adriana Thomas

Kimiko Thomas

Shanique Thomas

Alexis Thompson

Taylor Thompson

Jordan Thorpe

Hanna Tinsley

Christina Toms

Denetra Walker

Michael Walker

Briana Ward

Julien Washington

Tanardjah Washington

Silviller Watson

Damien Weickerson

Antonique Williams

Christine Williams

Jonisha Williams

Kayla Williams

Kaylah Williams

My’Resha Williams

Sernorita Williams

Stanley Williams

Tamia Williams

Tiara Williams

LeNeal Williams-McCall

Tyriek Williamson

Imani Wilson

Jason Wilson

Briana Woods

Cherish Young

Johnetta Young

Groves High School

Gabriel Alejandro

Tyler Allen

Eugene Anthony

Damian Avila

Cody Barnes

Janikka Bascom

Stephen Bear-Runner Davis

Shantle Benjamin

Marissa Bhojwani

Bryant Bigham

Nicholas Black

Jerald Blake

Brandon Bongalon

Diashon Brown

Ka’bria Brown

Ryan Bryant

Angellia Burnett

Janee’ Butler

Kristina Chandler

Briana Chaney

DeVetra Childers

Mikeysha Clark

Laterrya Coleman

Yahshea Collier

Shamari Cooper

Saasha Cumbee

Quamaine Davis

Shabari Davis

Logan DeGuzman

Shamera Demery

Lashay Doyle

Tyrell Durham

Brayon Early

Yasmine Edwards

Isaaca Elmore

Ja’Len Finch

Kamilah Fontanez

Shalon Foreman

Kierra Foresyth

Eldridge Gadson

Quintress Gallimore

Rizshea Garcia

Elvia Garcia-Hernandez

Leondraild Garvin

Nadia George

Rochelle Gettis

Juan Gomez

Alexis Green

Jamila Green

Jazmynne Green

Leroy Green

Bobby Griffin III

Courtney Groover

Michael Hampton

Travon Hankerson

Julia Harris

Travarious Harris

Dontray Hart

Mario Head

Eduardo Hernandez

Jasmine Heyward

Tommy Hicks

Alexander Hill

Madison Hollingsworth

Tatiana Howe

Sadaytrea Hunter

Nigera’ Hutchinson

Matthan Ivy

Aayliah Jackson

Rakeal Jenkins

Danielle Jensen

Trevaughn Johnson

Diquesha Jones

Jalen Jones

Kristin Kemp

Destiny Khaalis

Ahjanae LaFlure

Deon LeCount

Chance Lyles

Sequoia Mabry

Marvin Manning

Janisha McCray

T’Anna McIntyre

Craig McNeal

Alexis Merritt

Ka’Tia Middleton

Keavia Mincey

Antonio Moore

Antwon Moore

Vincent Mordecai

Emanuel Murillo

Rashad Murphy

Tre’von Nelson

Saer Niang

Devin Nixon

Sebastian Oakes

Pashen Outland

Sheldon Owens

Ramon Pacheco

Saul Palacios Sanchez

Meliza Perez

Minh Thu Pham

Jared Pollard

Elizabeth Porter

Ni’Kia Porter

Tasharra Porter

Kizzy Pringle

Tony Pullin

Ishmael Reed

Jonathan Rinkema

Yasmine Rivera

Shamarra Roberson

Jaquan Roberts

Freddie Robinson

Kayla Robinson

Maria Sams

Jatniel Santana

McGarrett Scott

Roneisha Scott

Jhabriya Scriven

Dynese Seabrooks

Erik Shepherd

Kenneth Simmons

Demetrius Simons

Craig Smalls

Gregory Smalls

Keyonna Smiley

Taqiyy Smith

Ashleigh-Helen Stafford

Jamal Stephens

Lisa Sutton

Alondra Tapia-Angeles

Antonio Thomas

Ciara Thomas

Siria Tinoco

Joelle Tippins

Ernest Tisdale

Deon Treadwell

Julian Turner

Therisha Tyson

Mario Valle-Aguilar

Shavonna Walker

Antonette Washington

Drakiya Washington

Carl Weston

Kamylle Williams

Angeleya Wilson

Jahshay Wilson

Kayla Wilson

Michael Winn

Nathaniel Wyatt

DeJour Young

JianJie Zheng

Beach High School

Deja Albatin

Justice Alston

William Amey

Alan Anderson

Jacqueline Anderson

Erica Bacon

Nykeita Balkcom

David Barney

Dexter Beard

Brittanee Bentley

Malik Biggins

Jasmine Bigham

James Bisard

Hailee Blake

Alesha Boles-Johnson

Schelia Boyd

Shardea Bright

Aaliyah Brightwell

Jabre Brown

Jawond Brown

Leonard Brown

Marcellus Brown

Marquilla Brown

Myracle Brown

Samuel Brown

Sierra Brown

Tierra Brown

DeAndre Bryant

Imari Bryant

Keyana Butler

Chelsea Cabreja

Takyra Callaway

Cedric Conner

Tamara Cooper

Kigeria Cunningham

Daiquan Davis

DaQuasia Dewitt

Shawntiauna Dobbins

Tadrain Drayton

Craig Dupoint

Jordan Ervin

Tazania Ervin

Devon Few

Ryan Gibbons

Marquetah Graham

Bille Grant

Khadijah Grant

Aaliyah Green

Jesse Green

Joshua Green

Sacorya Gregory

Melena Hall

Jabreia Hamilton

Malaysia Hamilton

Javon Hampton

Kabria Hankerson

Tamarae Harris

Alexis Harrison

Gabriel Haynes

Shalita Hicks

Darrius Holland

Shakia Holland

Ashley Holloman

Brandi Holman

Danielle Holmes

Tyrone Holmes

Marquaja Hopkins

Alexis Housey

Herbert Hudson

Maurice Hunter

Jaleia Jackson

Lachelle Jackson

Tyreik Jackson

Diamante James

Soleisha James

Alvin Jenkins

Dionna Jinks

Marquisha Johnson

Quincy Jones

Ritchie Jones

Tesa Jones

Phillip Karcher

Davarius Kennedy

Alexis King

Julius Kinlaw

Marshon Lapsley

Marliyah Lewis

Shateria Lewis

Alexis Lynard

Dakera Lyons

Shahid Mahdi

Kiannis Manker

Emani Mayner

Mikeia Mcgee

Timmesha Mcgee

Jahshawn McGirt

Raven McIntyre

Xavier Mckiver

Kennari Meachum

Demontrae Members

Jahshea Mike

Shanteria Morris

Valkery Mosley

Anthony Newton

Calayia Oliver

DeAndre Oliver

Dana Outing

Chekemia Outland

Raven Owens

Victoria Palmer

Shaniqua Passmore

Quaitez Patterson

Markiese Philpot

Dannette Pulley

Ametallah Quarterman

Natih Quarterman

Nykira Quarterman

Tiamat Reed

Markeya Relaford

Donnell Richardson

Ahmord Rivers

Nautica Roberson

Jacqunette Robinson

Brandon Rosemond

Marcus Royal

Heather Ruth

Jasmine Ruth

Camry Sabb

Alvin Scott

Rakeem Scott

Roniqua Scott

Sean Shields

Deasia Simmons

Brandy Simpkins

Briana Sisk

Kahliyl Smith

Myesha Smith

Quincy Smith

Susan V. Snith

Claire Smitley

Ilyn Spann

Shakeria Stewart

Kori Stokes

John Sullivan

Letrenya Sumter

Jadyn Taylor

Jamiah Taylor

Zimquavius Teal

Kristina Teddy

Ewing Thomas

SaDaytra Thomas

Traeshawn Thomas

Wayne Thomas

Caleb Thompson

Nakenda Thompson

Warren Thompson

Jeray Tillman

Alexxus Tims

Gregory Tyson

Keenan Wade

Fredrica Waldburg

Clifford Walhour

Luciana Washington

Shaniqua Watson

Daquan Watts

Jawan Wilkerson

Aaliyah Williams

Kenneth Williams

Teairra Williams

Briauna Wingster

Mandolin Wilson

Shamya Woolford

Charles Wright

William Wright

Sarah Youmans

Eric Zeigler

Windsor Forest High School

Mark Acasio

Khalil Afaneh

Summer’e Andary

Christopher Anderson

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SOUTH UNIVERSITY GRADUATES

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A small group of parishioners was allowed inside the bullet-scarred Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church on Saturday, getting a firsthand glimpse of the room where nine people from their congregation were slain.

Meanwhile, the FBI said it was investigating a manifesto purportedly written by the suspected gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof.

The website linked to Roof contained photos of him holding a burning American flag and standing on one. In other images, he was holding a Confederate flag, considered a divisive symbol by civil rights leaders and others.

The hate-filled 2,500-word essay talks about white supremacy, and the author says “the event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case” — the unarmed black teenager fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman while walking home in Florida in 2012.

The manifesto said “it was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right” and that the case led him to search “black on White crime” on the Internet.

“I have never been the same since that day,” it said.

It’s unclear whether Roof wrote the rants, but they are in line with what he has told friends and what he said before allegedly opening fire inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church Wednesday night.

Cleaning crews worked at the church Saturday, and church members announced they will hold a service today. Harold Washington, 75, was with the small group that saw the lower-level room where the victims were shot.

“They did a good job cleaning it up,” he said. “There were a few bullet holes around, but what they did, they cut them out so you don’t see the actual holes.”

He said he expected an emotional service with a large turnout today.

“We’re gonna have people come by that we’ve never seen before and will probably never see again, and that’s OK,” he said. “It’s a church of the Lord — you don’t turn nobody down.”

The church had that same welcoming nature when Roof walked into their Bible study, Felecia Sanders said at Roof’s bail hearing Friday. Sanders survived the shooting, but her son Tywanza died.

As for the possible manifesto, Internet registry records show that the website was created Feb. 9 via a Russian registry service with the owner’s personal details hidden. A man who answered the phone at the Moscow-based company would not say who the site’s owner was.

Roof is being held in jail, facing nine counts of murder and a weapons charge.

A police affidavit released Friday accused Roof of shooting all nine multiple times and making a “racially inflammatory statement” as he stood over an unidentified survivor.

Roof had complained while getting drunk on vodka recently that “blacks were taking over the world” and that “someone needed to do something about it for the white race,” according to Joey Meek, who tipped off the FBI when he saw his friend on surveillance images.

Just about 100 miles from Charleston, a large crowd rallied Saturday in Columbia against the presence of the Confederate flag on the grounds of the Statehouse. The church massacre has renewed calls for the removal of the flag.

Police wouldn’t give an estimate for attendance, but there appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of people there, chanting “take it down.”

“We know what that flag symbolizes,” Michaela Pilar Brown, a Columbia artist, said at the rally. “We know the hate. We know the danger. It says ‘stop.’ It says ‘you are not welcome here.’ It says ‘fear for your life.’ Take down the flag.”

In Charleston, the grief was so palpable three days after the shooting that a family re-routed its trip home from the beach and a bride-to-be interrupted her wedding day to pay their respects.

“It’s been a weird feeling, trying to have a celebration this weekend. But the whole city has been so supportive and such a show of grace,” said Kathryn Cole, 27, who lives two blocks away from the church and is set to say her nuptials Saturday night. “Life is carrying on. We aren’t letting this change our everyday lives.”

Greenville residents Stacey and Kenneth Penland arrived in Charleston for vacation Friday. During their first full day in the city, they came to the church with their children, 6-year-old Luke and 3-year-old Logan.

“We’ve been at the beach, and then the market, and of course we stopped by here,” said Kenneth Penland.

Derrick Jones was vacationing on Hilton Head Island when he decided to drive an hour out of his way home to Greenville. He stopped at the church with his wife and three boys.

“They’ve been asking questions all day since this has happened,” Jones said. “And I don’t really have all the answers. I try to explain it the best way I can.”

Confederate flag sets off GOP debate

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president in 2012, called for the immediate removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside the South Carolina Statehouse, scrambling the 2016 GOP presidential contenders into staking a position on a contentious cultural issue.

Some still steered clear from the sensitive debate, even after the shooting deaths further exposed the raw emotions about flying the flag.

Many see the Confederate flag as “a symbol of racial hatred,” Romney tweeted on Saturday. “Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.”

The former Massachusetts governor joins President Barack Obama and civil rights leaders in calling for the flag to come down as the nation grapples with Wednesday’s murders. The man charged with the crimes, Dylann Storm Roof, held the Confederate flag in a photograph on a website and displayed the flags of defeated white-supremacist governments in Africa on his Facebook page.

Romney’s statement prompted most of the Republican Party’s leading presidential contenders to weigh in on flying the Confederate battle flag, although few took a definitive position one way or the other. Many instead expressed personal dislike for the flag, but suggested it was up to the people of South Carolina to decide.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday his position is clear: “In Florida we acted, moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged,” he said in a statement provided to The Associated Press, referring to his 2001 order to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the historic Old Capitol building.

“Following a period of mourning there will rightly be a discussion among leaders in the state about how South Carolina should move forward, and I’m confident they will do the right thing,” Bush said.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker declined to offer his position. “I think they’re going to have a good, healthy debate — and should have a healthy debate in South Carolina amongst officials at the state level,” he told reporters after a speech Saturday night in Washington. “I think out of deference, before we have that discussion, we should allow the families of the loved ones to bury their dead.”

South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome. A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a 30-foot flagpole elsewhere on Statehouse grounds, where it has been flying at full staff.

The debate holds political risks for Republicans eager to win over South Carolina conservatives who support the display of the battle flag on public grounds. The state will host the nation’s third presidential primary contest in February, a critical contest in the 2016 race.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of four Republican senators running for president, told CNN he’s open to revisiting the decision to use the flag, but it “is a part of who we are.”

Former technology executive Carly Fiorina said Saturday she agrees the flag is a “symbol of racial hatred” yet declined to call for its removal, saying her “personal opinion is not what’s relevant here.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said the last thing the people of South Carolina need is “people from outside of the state coming in and dictating how they should resolve it,” Cruz said in a statement provided to The Associated Press.

He said he understands both sides of the debate — including those who see the flag as a symbol of “racial oppression and a history of slavery” and “those who want to remember the sacrifices of their ancestors and the traditions of their states — not the racial oppression, but the historical traditions.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said it’s ultimately “up to the people of South Carolina to decide, but if I were a citizen of South Carolina I’d be for taking it down.”

Spokesmen for most of the other Republican presidential contenders also either ignored such questions or formally declined to comment. They include Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, businessman Donald Trump and Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.

Democrats have been more willing to offer their opinions.

A White House spokesman said Friday that Obama continues to believe the flag belongs in a museum. Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton has yet to address the issue this week, but in 2007 called for the flag’s removal, in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war.

Gatherings around Georgia honor victims

ATLANTA — Hundreds gathered Saturday at a church in Atlanta in one of a number of vigils and meetings held around the state to honor the victims of a shooting at a black church in South Carolina.

Priests, pastors, rabbis and imams sat side-by side at the multi-faith gathering Saturday at Peachtree Christian Church, a historically white church in the heart of Atlanta. In addition to honoring the victims in Charleston, they also called for healing and reconciliation. Earlier in the week, a service was held at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s spiritual home.

The gathering in Atlanta was one of many services, vigils and meetings held around Georgia and around the country as people struggle to deal with the shooting.

“We are left grasping for the right words. Accurate words. Terrorism. Murder. Racism. But a word’s vocation is often times not enough to describe reality,” Peachtree Christian Senior Minister Jarrod Longbons said, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “So I’m exploring other words at the moment.”

The gathering at Peachtree Christian was by the Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights leader. He urged leaders of different racial and ethnic groups to come together to call for racial unity.

“We’ve come to let the world know that this is not a black problem. This is not a white problem. What happened in Charleston, South Carolina is an American problem,” he said. “And it’s going to require an American response.”

Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson said Friday at a vigil Saint Philip African Methodist Episcopal Church in that city that people must join together to fight racism, according to the Savannah Morning News.

“We, Savannah, must come together and we must continue to carry the message that we will not tolerate racism,” she said, later adding, “We have to say to our sisters and brothers in Charleston: We’re going to be there for you. We’re going to be praying for you.”

Edward DuBose, a national board member of the NAACP, said during a vigil organized by the group in Columbus that the organization is responding to the shocking killing with love.

“How can a person go into a church Bible study and sit with (them) an hour and then kill the people?” he asked, according to the Ledger-Enquirer. “Well, we’re familiar with that. Judas sat with Jesus and he was a killer. And how did Jesus handle that? Jesus said as they cast lots, as he laid on that cross, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.’”

CHARLESTON, S.C. — When Angela Brown saw the Facebook post about a shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, her mind immediately leapt to her aunt. Whenever the doors to Emanuel were open to its flock, Ethel Lance was there.

“This was her home,” said her niece, standing in the shadow of its soaring spire, tears streaming down her face.

So many people felt that way about “Mother” Emanuel.

Founded in 1818 by a free black shoemaker, the church stood as a beacon in a port city through which many legions of Africans passed on their way to bondage. Torched by angry whites after one organizer led a failed slave revolt, Emanuel rose from the ashes to serve as a stop on the Underground Railroad, even as state leaders banned all black churches and forced the congregation itself underground.

The current brick Gothic revival edifice was a mandatory stop for the likes of Booker T. Washington and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Still, Emanuel was not just a church for the black community.

And so, when a young white man walked into the Bible study Wednesday evening and asked for the minister, no one thought twice. The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Emanuel’s senior pastor, invited the stranger to sit beside him.

“He wanted him to feel at home, comfortable,” says Sylvia Johnson, the minister’s cousin. “Nothing to be fearful of. This is the house of the Lord, and you are welcome.”

But the visitor had not come to worship or to commune. Tempered by fire, its faith unshaken by temblors, Mother Emanuel was about to face perhaps its greatest test.

The door opens

“Is something missing from your life?” the church website asks under the Bible Study listing. “... then join us on Wednesdays at 6:00 p.m. in the lower level of the church. We look forward to seeing you!”

DePayne Middleton-Doctor was a deeply spiritual woman who led the weekly classes at Mother Emanuel. At 49, the mother of four was juggling a new job as a college enrollment counselor along with caring for four daughters. But Doctor always made time for her faith.

Doctor had begun attending Emanuel in January — and on this night Bible study was postponed for a church business meeting that saw Doctor licensed to minister there. She stood before 50 or so people as the presiding elder signed her Bible, hymnal and a church handbook.

Most left after the meeting. Before church member Willi Glee left, one of the part-time ministers approached.

“I need to give you a hug,” Sharonda Coleman-Singleton said.

Not long after Glee left, the wooden door at the back of the church opened, and in walked Dylann Storm Roof.

A vague plan

Roof had spent much of the last few weeks guzzling vodka in a haze of cigarette smoke. Bouncing between his dad’s home in Columbia, South Carolina, and the place his mother and her boyfriend shared in nearby Lexington, his life seemed to be slowly unraveling.

About a month ago, Roof reached out to Joseph Meek Jr., a middle school chum. Meek said the formerly laid-back Roof had begun ranting about black people, and how “someone needed to do something about it for the white race.” He made vague references to a “plan.”

When Roof turned 21 in April, he used gift money from his parents to buy a .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol with a laser sight.

At 8:16 that evening, a security camera at Emanuel captured the image of a slender man with a bowl haircut entering the fellowship hall.

God sees everything

In addition to Doctor and Pinckney, 10 others had gathered around a white-clothed table to study the New Testament book of Mark.

There was the Rev. Coleman-Singleton, 45, a former college track star turned girls track coach at a high school where she also worked as a speech pathologist. Coleman-Singleton urged just about anyone who didn’t go to church to start.

“God sees everything you do,” she often told her daughter’s friend, Maurice Coakley.

There was Cynthia Hurd, a 31-year employee of the city’s library system. Due to turn 55 in days, the avid gardener had recently told her brother she needed to start making plans for retirement.

Ethel Lance, 70, had been an Emanuel member most of her life. After retiring about five years ago from her housekeeping job at a performing arts center, Lance — mother of five, grandmother to seven and great-grandmother to four — became church sexton, helping keep the historic building clean.

Another old faithful was Susie Jackson, 87, who’d sung soprano in the choir for six decades and who belted out her favorite hymn, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” in the kitchen while preparing her famous “crazy bean soup.”

Also there were Jackson’s niece, Felecia Sanders; Sanders’ 26-year-old son, Tywanza, a barber who had graduated college last year after studying business; and Sanders’ 5-year-old granddaughter.

‘He was a good boy’

Authorities have not yet detailed what Roof did or said in the hour he sat with the group. But at some point, they say, he stood and pulled out his pistol.

Tywanza Sanders attempted to stop him.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said.

“You rape our women. And you’re taking over the country. I have to do this,” the gunman replied.

Felecia Sanders, one of three survivors, recounted the events later that night to Sylvia Johnson, Pinckney’s cousin. Her son, she told Johnson, was shot attempting to shield his great-aunt, Jackson. Sanders herself pushed her granddaughter to the floor, lay on top of her and told her to play dead.

When the shooting stopped, Roof went to 70-year-old Polly Sheppard, who’d been praying for salvation, and told her he was “letting her live so she could tell what happened,” she would tell her niece.

On the floor around Sheppard’s feet, eight lay dead: Tywanza Sanders, Doctor, Coleman-Singleton, Hurd, Jackson, Lance, parishioner Myra Thompson, 59, and Pinckney, who in addition to serving his church was a state legislator for 19 years. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a retired minister who’d became a regular attendee at Emanuel, died at the hospital.

Family members began gathering at a nearby hotel. Around midnight, Sylvia Johnson saw Felecia Sanders. The front of Sanders’ black dress was caked with blood.

“That’s my son’s blood,” her friend said numbly.

After a moment, a stunned Sanders spoke again.

“He was a good boy.”

‘Every fiber in my body hurts’

As investigators searched for clues, bouquets and cards piled up outside the church. Groups gathered to cry and pray and try to fathom how this could have happened.

Alonza Washington, pastor of nearby Wallingford Presbyterian, said the church had suffered through many tragedies. But this “great evil act” seemed somehow different.

“It has shaken the fabric of human nature and this nation and world, and certainly the foundation of the church,” he said. “But it’s going to stand.”

Roof was in custody within 13 hours. When he appeared for a bond hearing Friday, about four dozen relatives and friends of the dead turned out to see the man who, in the words of Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, had committed this act of “pure, pure concentrated evil.”

The assembled could see Roof — in a baggy, striped jumpsuit, his hands cuffed behind him — over a closed-circuit television. He could not see the anguished crowd but could hear them.

Roof’s blue eyes stared blankly as one voice after another shared with him the lessons they’d learned at Emanuel, and from their lost loved ones. They had been taught to forgive those who trespass against them; to hate the sin, but love the sinner.

Anthony Thompson, Myra’s widower, pleaded with Roof to “take this opportunity to repent.”

Then came Felecia Sanders. Clutching a tissue, she reminded Roof how she and the others had “welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms,” and how he had repaid that kindness.

“You have killed some of the most beautifulest people that I know,” she said as he stood, eyes downcast. “Every fiber in my body hurts.”

Unlike the others, Sanders did not offer him her explicit forgiveness. But reminded him how “we enjoyed you” for that brief time in their Mother Emanuel, their refuge, their home. “May God have mercy on you.”

De Blasio, church leaders rally in NYC

NEW YORK — Several hundred strong marched in a light rain Saturday from a church in Queens to a nearby park in stalwart opposition to the violence that took nine lives.

“This was an act of racist terrorism,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “It is abundantly clear and it pains us deeply that the pain of racism is alive in our country still.”

De Blasio was joined by several elected officials at the rally held by Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York, a church pained by the suffering at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church.

“Black lives matter,” said de Blasio. “We shouldn’t have to say it,” the mayor continued, “but we have to say it over and over until we no longer have to convince anyone of our common humanity.”

The most poignant moment of the rally came at its end. Attendees linked arms in prayer. They lit nine candles, one for each victim. After a moment of silence, a clergy member with a microphone called for the crowd to turn around and look at the back of the grassy field.

There, a middle-aged white police officer and two young black men were standing together, their arms on each other’s shoulders as they observed the moment of silence.

“That is the photo of the event that we need,” shouted the Rev. Craig Wright, a pastor from Long Island. “That is what we can be.”

From wire reports

The rally began with the singing of “We Shall Overcome” and other Civil Rights-era songs. Several members of the crowd wiped away tears as the nine victims were remembered.

Nearly all yelled loudly when state Assembly member N. Nick Perry led the group in chanting that South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of its statehouse.

Roof is facing nine counts of murder and a weapons charge. Prosecutors allege he sat in the church in Charleston for nearly an hour before opening fire.