Charleston Church Massacre: Thug, Terrorism, Disturbed Loner?

A fundraising website launched by the sister of a gunman who killed 9 people at a US church has been taken down after heavy criticism on social media.

A page set up in the name of Amber Roof had called for donations to pay for her wedding, which was cancelled after the attack on the church in South Carolina.

She said her wedding day had been "tainted by the actions of one man".

Dylann Roof was charged with nine counts of murder for the attack on African-American church in Charleston.

Ms Roof was due to marry her partner Michael on 21 June, four days after the attack on the Emanuel AME Church.

Writing on their fundraising page, the couple said their "lives were forever changed" by the event, adding that the media "abused our privacy" by publishing details about their wedding.

They said they had cancelled their wedding "to protect our family and mourn the lives of those lost".

The money would help "to cover lost wedding costs, to pay bills, and to send us on our dream honeymoon", they wrote.

The couple added that they would give 10% of funds raised to the church in Charleston.
Just before the page was taken down on Thursday afternoon they had raised about $1,600 (£1,025) of their $5,000 target.

GoFundMe told the BBC that the page had been taken down by the user, not the company.

One person who had donated wrote: "I can't imagine what you are going through. I too have a selfish brother that has ruined a few of my special days."

But on Twitter, many users accused the campaign of being insensitive, with one saying: "If the public of Charleston has spare money it should not be going to you."

Dylann Roof was arrested the day after the shootings, more than 200 miles (320 km) away in North Carolina.

He appeared in court in Charleston on 19 June and was charged with nine counts of murder and one weapons possession charge.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has called for the 21-year-old to face the death penalty.

I know she didn't commit the crime, but this is hanging over her families heads for the rest of their lives.

Yeh, she's a real piece of work. "Lets see if I can cash in on this terrible incident".
Everything seems to fly over hawkees head

Like it or not, when her obituary is written, it will mention her brother went on a killing spree in an historic black church in 2015.

Yes, everyone knows that. However, in actual real life, not the utopia you suddenly are describing, horrendous murders and family members of the perpetrators are never really forgiven.

We are responsible for our actions, not for others.

That tells you all you need to know about her in a nutshell.

With our monuments lying about secession, our textbooks obfuscating what the Confederacy was about, and our army honoring its generals, no wonder so many Americans supported the Confederacy until last week. We can literally see the impact Confederate symbols and thinking had on Dylann Roof, but other examples abound. In his mugshot, Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, wore a neo-Confederate T-shirt showing Abraham Lincoln and the words, "Sic semper tyrannis!" When white students in Appleton, Wis., a recovering sundown town that for decades had been "all white" on purpose, had issues with Mexican American students in 1999, they responded by wearing and waving Confederate flags, which they already had at home, at the ready. Across the country, removing slavery from its central role in prompting the Civil War marginalizes African-Americans and makes us all stupid.

De-Confederatizing the United States won't end white supremacy, but it will be a momentous step in that direction.

Oh, come one now. You couldn't get 90% of them to sign anything vaguely controversial. That's just plain rhetoric.