DOJ Settles With Survivors, Families In South Carolina Church Shooting

Families of nine victims killed in a racist attack at a Black South Carolina church have reached a settlement with the Justice Department over a faulty background check that allowed Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the 2015 massacre.

The $88 million deal, which includes $63 million for the families of the slain and $25 million for survivors of the shooting, was set to be announced Thursday according to Bakari Sellers, a attorney who helped broker the agreement.

Sellers said the 88 figure was purposeful: It's a number typically associated with White supremacy and the number of bullets Roof said he had taken with him to the attack.

“We’ve given a big 'F you' to White supremacy and racism,” Sellers told the Associated Press. “We’re doing that by building generational wealth in these Black communities, from one of the most horrific race crimes in the country.”

Months before the June 17, 2015 church shooting, Roof was arrested by Columbia, South Carolina, police on the drug possession charge. But a series of clerical errors and missteps allowed Roof to buy the handgun he later used in the killings. The errors included wrongly listing the sheriff’s office as the arresting agency in the drug case, according to court documents. An examiner with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System found some information on the arrest but needed more to deny the sale, so she sent a fax to a sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office responded it didn’t have the report, directing her to the Columbia police.

Under the system’s operating procedures, the examiner was directed to a federal listing of law enforcement agencies, but Columbia police did not appear on the list. After trying the separate West Columbia Police Department and being told it was the wrong agency, the examiner did nothing more.

After a three-day waiting period, Roof went back to a West Columbia store to pick up the handgun.

The lawsuit for a time was thrown out, with a judge writing that an examiner followed procedures but also blasting the federal government for what he called its “abysmally poor policy choices” in how it runs the national database for firearm background checks. The suit was subsequently reinstated by a federal appeals court.

In 2017, Roof became the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime. Authorities have said Roof opened fire during the Bible study at the church, raining down dozens of bullets on those assembled. He was 21 at the time.

The slain included the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of the AME Emanuel Church; a state senator; and other pillars of the community. They all shared deep devotion to the church, known as Mother Emanuel, and passed that faith along to their families, many of whom offered Roof forgiveness when he appeared in court just days after the attack.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.