Dylann Storm Roof, born on April 3, 1994, in Columbia, South Carolina, is an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and mass murderer who carried out the 2015 Charleston church shooting, killing nine African American worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. At the age of 21, Roof entered the church during a Bible study session on June 17, 2015, and opened fire, killing nine people including senior pastor and South Carolina state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injuring one other. The attack was motivated by Roof's racist ideology; he confessed to aiming to ignite a race war. Roof had become radicalized online, consuming white supremacist propaganda, and posed with symbols of hate including the Confederate flag in a manifesto he posted online. His actions were widely condemned as domestic terrorism, sparking national debates on gun control, racial violence, and Confederate symbols. Following the shooting, Roof fled but was apprehended the next day in Shelby, North Carolina. He waived his Miranda rights and confessed. In 2016, he was charged with 33 federal hate crime counts. His December 2016 trial lasted less than three hours before he was found guilty on all counts. In January 2017, Roof was sentenced to death by lethal injection for federal charges; a state trial also resulted in a death sentence. He remains on death row at Broad River Correctional Institution in South Carolina with appeals ongoing. Prior to the shooting, Roof led a troubled life marked by academic struggles, drug use, and minor brushes with the law. He dropped out of high school and briefly worked as a landscape contractor. His family background included an unstable home environment with parents divorcing when he was young. The Emanuel Nine massacre remains one of the deadliest hate crimes in modern U.S. history, profoundly impacting the African American community and civil rights movements.