The man suspected of killing nine people at a prayer meeting at a historic black church in this city’s downtown area was caught on Thursday some 200 miles away in North Carolina, local and federal officials said.
After an intensive, 14-hour manhunt for the man who carried out a massacre that officials are calling racially motivated, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, “was arrested in Shelby, N.C., during a traffic stop” shortly after 11 a.m., said Greg Mullen, the Charleston police chief.
Dylann Storm Roof wearing a jacket with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa, top, and Rhodesia, as modern-day Zimbabwe was called during a period of white rule.
Mr. Obama said he had known the pastor who was killed, as well as other church members. And he called the shooting “particularly heartbreaking” because it occurred in a place of worship where African-Americans worked to end slavery.
The president said lawmakers should address the easy availability of guns, which he said helps make such tragedies possible, adding that he has “had to make statements like this too many times.”