Abstract

(Case 1) On the evening of June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof burst into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and killed nine people, all African Americans. Roof’s despicable action was not the result of a sudden and uncontrollable outburst that randomly targeted innocent churchgoers. Roof was, by his own admission, a white supremacist: on his website one could find a manifesto containing his (negative) opinions concerning African Americans and other racial groups as well as pictures of himself wearing a jacket with two white supremacist emblems: the flags of former Rhodesia and that of Apartheid-era South Africa. There was also a photo of Roof with a handgun and the Confederate flag. His actions on the day of the shooting, were planned and his goal was to ignite a civil war (Mindock 2015; Costa et al. 2015).