Roof visited Emanuel 8 times before shootings, fled on back roads, GPS says

Minutes after nine parishioners were gunned down at a historic African-American church in Charleston, accused killer Dylann Roof headed north, FBI agents said, first on Interstate 26 and then along narrow country roads, fleeing a massive manhunt.

It was nearing midnight on June 17, 2015, and Roof – a self-avowed white supremacist from the Columbia area – suddenly was America’s most wanted man.

He steered north toward Charlotte, where he would apparently grab a few hours of sleep in his car, withdraw $20 from his First Citizens bank account at an ATM machine and keep on going.

“Essentially, the travel was on one-lane rural roads,” testified FBI agent Joseph Hamski, who told the federal jury on Tuesday that the route taken by Roof, who arrived in Charlotte at 2:21 a.m. the next day, took him almost three hours longer than going by the interstate.

He had had time to think about his exit from Charleston, the FBI agent asserted.

For six months before the killings, Roof had stalked the historic “Mother” Emanuel AME church, making repeated visits to it, both day and night, according to a GPS in Roof’s car, Hamski testified.

Roof first visited the church in downtown Charleston on Dec. 22, 2014. That was followed by visits on Feb. 23, Feb. 27, April 25, May 9 and May 16, Hamski testified. On two days, he went there twice.

After law enforcement arrested Roof in Shelby, N.C., a day after the killings, agents found a Garmin Nuvi GPS in his car. A Garmin official testified Tuesday that such devices keep a memory of everywhere they have been, as long as they are turned on.

Since Roof kept his GPS on during most of his travels, investigators – by superimposing Garmin’s computer data points on Google Maps – had a precise record of his whereabouts in the months before the killings, the official said.

Hamski, the 35th witness, testifying on the fifth day of the prosecution’s case, was the lead agent in the case. Since Hamski had knowledge of all the elements of the case, prosecutors used him to stitch together a narrative.

In all, Hamski told the jury, the 50 FBI agents who worked on the case conducted 215 interviews, served 65 subpoenas, conducted 13 searches and seized 530 pieces of evidence.

Hamski’s testimony was based on numerous pieces of video, photographic and paper evidence from computers, digital flash drives and a camera.

Computer evidence was taken from the Cedar Street house of his father, Ben Roof, in downtown Columbia.

Flash drive and video and still-shot camera evidence, along with rolls of film, was taken from the house of Roof’s mother’s boyfriend, Daniel Beard, on Garners Ferry Road in Hopkins.

Three videos showed Roof having target practice with the black .45 caliber Glock pistol he is accused of using to kill the nine parishioners. That shooting, which took place in Beard’s backyard, shows Roof pointing his pistol slightly above the camera and using his laser sight, which emitted pulses of red-orange light. Then, he fired.

In another scene, Roof tossed a box-like object in the air and shot it. He also fired in the air, at a tree and at what appeared to be a water bottle. He was wearing in a oversized sleeveless gym shirt.

While the video clips of his target practice played in court, Roof, who sat motionless throughout the day, dipped his head even farther down and to the left than he had all day.

Hamski, who was on the witness stand for more than two hours, also wove a story of what prosecutors say was Roof’s growing obsession with the glory days of the old Confederacy and what had supposedly been lost once the slaves gained freedom after the Civil War.

Roof, Hamski testified, visited sites that were still-intact mansions of former slave plantations: McLeod Plantation, Boone Hall, Magnolia Plantation and Sullivans Island, where tens of thousands of slaves were brought into South Carolina.

One site Roof visited near Columbia was Kensington Mansion, where in the 1820s three slaves were hung after killing an overseer. Emanuel AME church itself was associated with a rebellion by Denmark Vesey, a freed slave, who was hung by whites along with some 30 slaves for allegedly plotting a rebellion, Hamski testified.

What few questions Roof’s defense attorney, David Bruck, had for Hamski were aimed at showing Roof was a seriously disturbed loner. Bruck, who has acknowledged Roof’s guilt, has been trying to show the jury Roof isn’t like most people.

Yes, Hamski acknowledged, none of the hundreds of photos Roof took have any other people in them. Roof acted alone and was not a member of any extremist organization, the agent testified.

The prosecution is expected to wind up its case Wednesday.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Roof visited Emanuel 8 times before shootings, fled on back roads, GPS says."