June 19, 2015 9:00am by David Farrar

A terrible crime

A 21-year-old white man suspected of killing nine people at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina was arrested on Thursday after an attack that the United States is investigating as a hate crime. …

Roof sat with churchgoers inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church for about an hour on Wednesday before opening fire, Mullen said. The victims, six females and three males, included Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was the church’s pastor and a Democratic member of the state Senate.

“He just said, ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country,” Johnson said.

What a terrible crime and slaughter of innocents. Whether the killer is mad or bad (or both) will be determined in due course.

Any attack on innocents is terrible, but there is something particularly chilling about it happening in a church.