Authorities on Thursday arrested the suspect in the fatal shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C., after a florist in North Carolina spotted the suspect’s car on her drive to work.
The suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, was arrested in Shelby, N.C. on Thursday morning, and he now awaits a bond hearing in Charleston.
Debbie Dills saw what she believed was the suspect’s car while driving toward Kings Mountain, N.C. She pulled over and called a friend, Todd Frady, who then called the Kings Mountain police, according to NBC News.
Dills told CNN that she had been watching news coverage of the shooting, which left nine people dead at a historic black church in Charleston, and she recognized Roof’s car and haircut.
She said that while Frady spoke to the police, she got back on the highway to catch up with the suspect.
“Everything inside of me said, it’s possible, but everything inside of me didn’t want to believe it either,” she told CNN.
Dills got the suspect’s license plate tag number, and police later apprehended Roof. Frady told Dills that the man she spotted driving was in fact Dylann Roof, according to NBC News.
“We did what good citizens should do,” she told NBC.
Watch Dills’ interview with CNN below:
She helped bring a killer to justice without using a gun and going all Rambo.
Thank you so much Debbie for being persistent in seeing this murderer be apprehended swiftly.
She tracked him for 30 miles. Wow. Great job.
Tons of respect for her, but there are pieces of this story that don’t make sense. She says she recognized the car and Roof from the tv pictures, and she also says she saw the front license plate. She says she pulled off to the side of the road to call her friend, then after talking to him got back onto the road and made up the four or five miles he had advanced while she was talking on the phone. She says the cops arrived “within seconds” and “ten to fifteen minutes later.”
I’m not questioning her honesty. Witness memories are selective. However there are details here that need to be clarified, and there may be more to this story than has been reported so far.