So here’s the only suspect (identified from photos taken at the scene of the massacre) in the terrorist attack on “Mother” Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, which left nine people dead: Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old who posed on his Facebook page (see one of the images above) with flag patches from Apartheid-era South Africa and the racist Rhodesian regime that governed what is now Zimbabwe.

And then there’s this from NBC News:

Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of church shooting victim Pastor Clementa Pinckney says she spoke with one of the survivors “and she said that he had reloaded five different times… and he just said ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.’”

Roof’s uncle told police he was given a gun for his most recent birthday.

Lord have mercy on our souls.

UPDATE: Roof has been captured in North Carolina.

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.