Sharp-Eyed Driver Helped Nab Shooting Suspect

Woman's call to 911 led to arrest of Dylann Roof
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 18, 2015 5:19 PM CDT
Sharp-Eyed Driver Helped Nab Shooting Suspect
Dylann Storm Roof is escorted from the Sheby Police Department in Shelby, N.C.   (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

The man accused of murdering nine people in a church in South Carolina got busted because of a woman who was leaving church in North Carolina. As ABC News explains, Debbie Dills was leaving church this morning when she noticed that the driver in the car next to her matched the description of the shooting suspect in Charleston. His bowl haircut was one giveaway. She called 911, and cops soon pulled over Dylann Roof in Shelby, NC. He had made it about 250 miles from the scene of the crime. Roof, 21, has waived extradition and was being returned to South Carolina.

A friend tells AP that Roof, who wore a jacket that bore the flags of the former racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia, had been spouting racist talk lately. "He said blacks were taking over the world," recalls Joseph Meek. "Someone needed to do something about it for the white race." Meek says he was with Roof yesterday morning, but Roof opted not to go to a local lake with friends and said he would go to a movie instead. The next time Meek saw him was on surveillance photos released by police. "I didn't think it was him. I knew it was him," says Meek, who called police. (More Dylann Roof stories.)

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