{Nine people have died in a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.}<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officers told a press conference early Thursday morning that the incident, which happened on Wednesday night, was likely a hate crime directed at certain people.<\/p>\n
“I do believe this was a hate crime,” Police Chief Gregory Mullen said.<\/p>\n
Eight people died at the scene at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church while one person was pronounced dead at a hospital, Mullen said.<\/p>\n
WCBD, a local TV channel, reported that among the dead was Mr Clementa Pinckney, the South Carolina State senator who was pastor of the church.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old politician was married with two children and had served in the state senate since 2000.<\/p>\n
The shooting happened while members of the church were taking part in a prayer meeting, according to Mayor Joe Riley.<\/p>\n
MANHUNT FOR ‘WHITE MAN’<\/p>\n
“This is inexplicable,” Riley said. “It is the most intolerable and unbelievable act possible … The only reason someone could walk into church and shoot people praying is out of hate.”<\/p>\n
By the time of filing this report, the suspect was still at large.<\/p>\n
Officials described the gunman as a 21-year-old white man with sandy blond hair and a slender build wearing a grey hoodie, blue jeans and Timberland boots.<\/p>\n
The mayor said he had met with some of the families and described the encounter as “the most heart-breaking scene he had ever witnessed”.<\/p>\n
The police chief on Thursday announced that the city would be offering a reward for information that would lead to the capture of the suspect but the amount is to be set later in the day.<\/p>\n
Investigators believe that there was only one suspect in the tragedy, which unfolded around 9pm, but they consider him to be armed and extremely dangerous.<\/p>\n
Local authorities were using track dogs to try and track him down as FBI officers arrived at the scene to assist in the manhunt.<\/p>\n
{{Agencies}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Nine people have died in a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.} Law enforcement officers told a press conference early Thursday morning that the incident, which happened on Wednesday night, was likely a hate crime directed at certain people. “I do believe this was a hate crime,” Police Chief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000068909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-19856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000068909,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19856.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19856.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19856.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19856.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19856.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19856.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000068909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19856"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=19856"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=19856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}