“A black friend of the white man accused of murdering nine people at a Charleston church says the suspect told him a week prior to the killings that he planned to shoot up a local college campus,” foxnews.com reports. “Christon Scriven, [above] a drinking buddy of Dylann Roof, told The Associated Press that he thought Roof’s statements were just drunken bluster. However, Scriven said that he was concerned enough that he and another friend, Joey Meek, went out to take his .45-caliber gun, hiding it in an air-conditioning vent of a mobile home until they all sobered up.” And then gave it back, later. Here’s how Scriven described the conversation . . .
“He just said he was going to hurt a bunch of people” at the College of Charleston,” said Scriven, 22.
“I said, ‘What did you say? Why do you want to hurt those people in Charleston?'”
“He just said, ‘In seven days. … I have seven days.'”
Just a week later, Roof, 21, is believed to have gone into Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, sat in for a Bible study class for at least an hour and then fired upon participants.
There are two times when you can intervene to prevent or at least reduce the toll of a spree killing: before and during.
Time and time again friends, family, law enforcement, psychological professionals, educators and others have failed to address obvious ongoing serious mental issues in people who’ve revealed their desire to commit murder (e.g., Newton killer Adam Lanza’s “hero wall” on the Danish spree killer).
So all that’s left is intervention at the sharp.
Not to coin a phrase, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The maxim applies here. (Roof was apprehended by armed officers) It will continue to apply elsewhere. [h/t DrVino]
I read(well, skipped through) that little turd’s manifesto. The fact that he had black friends right up to the point where he massacred those people…frankly blows my mind.
The refrigerator had not commanded him to kill yet.
HAHA!
My youngest daughter was in an apartment complex who had a oriental lady who had conversations and struggles with her refrigerator as it had its own personality. The lady also claimed people would go into her apartment and pull down her panties. The lady ran around and would yell at people about them being dirty bastards and dirty whores. This women was just as nuts as Storm Roof. Really scary. Finally the land lord did not renew her lease.
The fact that he had black friends right up to the point where he massacred those people…frankly blows my mind. Being on a serious note, this is not surprising to my wife who has worked with the crazies..
Damn. I guess the “I have a black friend, so clearly I’m not a racist” argument is going to hold less water.
He had a black friend ? That seems very odd considering the posted rants we saw earlier. Seemed like he hated virtually everyone, except himself.
He said it was harder to kill on campus-what with all the non 70year old church ladies. BTW a GLOCK 41? I guess bowl-head didn’t want to miss.AND a laser too. And from a blast of the past…I worked at a factory 40 years ago and used to get high after work with an idiot who had SS tats and Nazi shite everywhere-and one of our imbibers was a big black guy just out of Vietnam. But nazi boy mostly hated JEWS. He even asked “don’t you like Germans-you’re German YOURSELF” when I said naziis suck. So I guess there is selective hate too…
“Not to coin a phrase, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
To coin a phrase means that you’re creating one. I’m pretty sure that one’s already coined.
Yeah, I was trying to resist getting all pedantic about that.
Robert; you guys are looking to hire a copy editor, you just don’t know it yet, apparently.
Give me a call.
might be why he qualified the “coin a phrase” statement with “not.”
“Not to coin a phrase (i.e. because he’s not the first person to say it)…” is the syntax at work here, I believe.
“He just said, ‘In seven days. … I have seven days.’” So the neighbor’s dog told him that he had 7 days to kill people or he would turn into Son of Sam?
* raspy voice* “You will die in 7 days”…
This guy was throwing red flags and no one tried to stop him?
Common sense legislation would have….
How could he be racist he had a black friend?
I do not know if Storm Roof even knew what planet he was on. If you have ever been around one of these types of people, they have very disjointed logic and thinking. Really, Storm Roof having black friends and wanting to kill all blacks is not surprising, My wife worked with the crazies and my daughter lived next to a crazy. The thinking is just unreal, very disjointed and non lucid.
It’s like those who say racist or homophobic crap then say “I’m not racist/homophobic, I have a black/gay friend!”
I come across a few people like that. General dislike for blacks but claim to have that one or few black friend(s) that is okay because they ‘aint like those others’ so he’s a good guy. The black friend more than not is the resource that is referenced to ask why black people think, say, do, dress, talk, walk, etc. “like this”. The black friend is also someone he can bounce his light-hearted jokes about black people off..cos’ he’s just messing with ya.
Some folk are really strange to figure as many people don’t fit the pure logical form and everyday behavior that squares readily with their viewpoints, beliefs, philosophy and biases. The nuances always makes things blurry for onlookers.
As usual whenever these (rarer than the mass media admits) occurrences happen, there’s a boatload of red flags prior. In vino veritas – if I were out drinking with friends and one of them expressed a desire to kill people, I wouldn’t chalk it up to drunken bluster, I’d chalk it up to him being drunk enough to tell the truth. No one decided to bring this guy in for some help?
alcohol, like the internet, brings out the real man. And it can be real dark and scary.
FYI
in vimo veritas = in wine (there is) truth.
FYI
in vimo veritas (latin) = in wine (there is) truth.(English)
the latin word for wine is vino with an “N” not vimo…
The college was too hard a target, so he decided to kill some old ladies instead? What a little charmer.
Old Sparky can’t be hot enough for that Moe Howard haircut POS.
Typical spineless worm.
yes ,time to fire up ole sparky
I think they should hang him from a tree.
Yes, and he did it all in the week leading up to his sister’s wedding, as the little cherry of assholery on his scumbag sundae.
And your odd friend makes that statement and you do nothing about it. Better get to the sink you’re going to spend a lifetime washing the blood off your hands.
I’d imagine that I’d be second guessing my decisions if I was Mr. Scriven. I don’t envy that fellow. I don’t blame him either. It would be a tough call.
There’s going to be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking about this Scriven fellow, but let’s not kid ourselves: even if he had reported this conversation to “the authorities”, what would have likely happened? They would’ve sent a couple cops to talk to him, and that would have probably been the end of the intervention. The guy was obviously able to be virulently racist and still have black friends, so he must have been at least halfway good at lying and hiding his true (batshit crazy) thoughts. The odds that Scriven reporting this conversation to someone would have stopped this shithead from killing people are very, very low.
Didn’t the turd in Isla Vista get a visit from the police before his killing spree? After he had already posted some pretty alarming stuff to YouTube? So, yeah, I’m not putting too much faith in “see something, say something” stopping very many of these nutcases.
Do the cops have Roofs Glock? They know what gun it was, but I have not read they actually have the gun.
My understanding is that he (Roof) had a .45 Glock with him when he was arrested (in the car, not on his person). Odds are it’s the</i> same gun.
Why is it every time this happens they interview all his friends, and everyone is like oh that guy?? Yeah he’s crazy as F, definitely talked about killing everyone pretty much every day.
He was so unstable you hid his gun in an AC vent, but gave it back when he sobered up? Nice.
I knew a guy once, I guess he was a friend…sort of. More of an acquaintance. But he asked me once for a silencer. I had no clue where to get a can back then, but I did know firearms. I asked him what he needed a silencer for and he flat told me that he was going to rob a lady making a night deposit from a pizza joint and she might scream and he would have to “blow her away” I was stunned.
Needless to say he didn’t get the can. He did do the robbery I later read in the paper.
He’s in prison now forever for another crime he committed. He’s never getting out.
Gee, thanks for coming forward NOW after he murdered a handful of people. Good freakin’ job.
So once again, we see that a spree shooter didn’t just snap. He planned. More than that, he blabbed in advance. And nobody did anything substantive.
In here, had they said something, they’d be ridiculed as alarmists complicit in snatching a man’s rights.