Nine people were fatally shot at “one of Charleston’s oldest and best-known black churches” last night. The gunman is described as a young white male, and Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said, “There is no doubt in my mind that this is a hate crime.” Update: The FBI has reportedly identified the shooter as 21-year-old Dylann Roof of Columbia, S.C. [See update below]

The shooting occurred at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Calhoun street. According to the NY Times, “Initial police reports said he entered the church about 9 p.m. and began shooting.Among the dead was the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a state senator.”

Authorities have described the shooter as a “very dangerous individual” and warned that the public should not approach him. Mullen said, “We have investigators that are out tracking, leads are coming in and we will continue to do that until we find this individual who carried out this crime tonight and bring him to justice. This is a tragedy that no community should have to experience. It is senseless, 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.”

Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of a survivor, told NBC affiliate WIS-TV, “At the conclusion of the Bible study, from what I understand, they just start hearing loud noises ringing out, and he had already wounded — the suspect already wounded a couple of individuals.”

One of them, she said, was Pinckney, a 41-year-old married father of two and Democratic member of the state Senate.

The female survivor told Johnson that the gunman reloaded five different times and that her son was trying to “talk him out of doing the act of killing people.”

But he wouldn’t listen, she said.

“You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go,” the shooter told the group, according to the survivor’s account to Johnson.

Eight victims were pronounced dead at the church, while one died while on the way to the hospital. The victims are six women and one man. It’s unclear how many other victims there are, but authorities say there are some survivors. From the Post and Courier:

Outside Medical University Hospital, the area trauma center where the wounded were taken, Jon Quil Lance stepped away from the building to smoke a cigarette and think about his grandmother, Ethel Lance, who he’d heard was shot in the church.

“I’m lost, I’m lost,” he said. “Granny was the heart of the family.” He said his grandmother had worked at the church for more than 30 years.

“She’s a Christian, hardworking; I could call my granny for anything. I don’t have anyone else like that.” He said he didn’t know her condition. “I don’t even know if she’s alive now.” He threw his hands up. “I don’t even know if my grandmother is alive.”

Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said, “We just left speaking to members of the families. It was a heartbreaking scene I have never witnessed in my life before.” He called the shooting “an unfathomable and unspeakable act by somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind” and the suspect is “a no good, horrible person and we will see that he pays the price. We want to put our arms around that church and that church family.”

The congregation was established in 1816 and the church itself was built in 1891. It’s listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which calls it “the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South.”

Update 11:26 a.m.: Reuters reports that Roof, the suspected gunman, has been apprehended by authorities in Shelby, N.C.

Update 10:30 a.m.: According to Reuters, the suspect is Dylann Roof. His uncle Carson Cowles said, “The more I look at him, the more I’m convinced, that’s him,” and that law enforcement was at Roof’s mother’s house.

The Post-Courier reports, “Roof has been arrested twice in South Carolina as an adult, according to the State Law Enforcement Division. He was jailed March 1 in Lexington County on a drug charge and again on April 26 on a trespassing charge. A Justice Department spokesman said federal officials have opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting at the historic black church.”

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