Charleston church shooting wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, judge rules

By Christen Smith

Outside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, after the June 17, 2015 shooting. (Photo: Associated Press)
A federal judge on Thursday denied the FBI’s request to dismiss a wrongful death suit against the agency over its alleged negligence in the background check process that allowed Dylann Roof to buy the gun he used to kill nine black parishioners at a South Carolina church in June 2015.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel ruled some of the arguments in the case, brought by surviving family members of the victims, are “sufficiently plausible to at least survive a motion to dismiss.”
On June 17, 2015, 21-year-old Roof opened fire during a bible study at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, killing nine. A federal jury convicted him of murder and hate crimes last year, and sentenced him to death in January.
In the weeks after the shooting, FBI Director James Comey admitted the agency should have denied Roof’s background check application he submitted when buying the firearm due to the felony drug arrest on his record, however, clerical errors at the local level left federal agents blind to his criminal history.
The FBI’s oversight allowed Roof to buy a .45-caliber Glock handgun from a

Source: Guns.com