The Charleston church shooting ( also known as the Charleston church massacre ) was a mass shooting Use_firearm in which Dylann Roof , a 21-year-old white supremacist , murdered Killing nine African Americans ( including the senior pastor , state senator Clementa C. Pinckney ) during a prayer service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston , South Carolina , on the evening of June 17 , 2015 .

The morning after the attack , police arrested Arrest Roof in Shelby , North Carolina .

Roof was found Know competent to stand trial in federal court , and in December 2016 was convicted Criminal_investigation of 33 federal hate crime and murder charges stemming from the shooting .

Roof was separately charged Judgment_communication with nine counts of murder in the South Carolina state courts .

In April 2017 , Roof pleaded Request guilty to all nine state charges in order to avoid a second death sentence and was sentenced Judgment_communication to life imprisonment for each , clearing the way for his eventual federal execution .

Roof espoused Statement racial hatred in both a website manifesto published before the shooting , and a journal written from jail afterwards .

Photographs posted on the website showed Roof posing with emblems associated with white supremacy and with photos of the Confederate battle flag .