Justice Department reaches settlement with families of 2015 Charleston church massacre
(Charleston, S.C.) BREAKING NEWS: The federal government will pay a total $88 million to settle a case brought by the families and survivors of the nine Charleston church shooting victims murdered by a white nationalist in 2015.
The total settlement amount was confirmed Thursday by Charleston attorney Carl Pierce, whose firm represented one of the people slain at Mother Emanuel church, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr.
Individual settlements for all victims in the shooting were being filed Thursday morning in the U.S. District Court in Columbia. It was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Five years in the making, the settlement arose out of lawsuits filed by victims and their families in the wake of the June 2015 murders at the historic Mother Emanuel Church. The convicted shooter, Dylann Roof, was found guilty and sentenced to death in federal court in January 2017. The lawsuits alleged that the FBI, which had a duty to perform background checks on handgun buyers, was negligent when the agency performed a background check on Roof, who had just turned 21.
Under federal law, gun buyers must undergo a computer background check at the federally-licensed firearm dealer. Roof exploited what critics call a weakness in the law — the so-called “Charleston loophole” — to buy the .45 caliber Glock handgun that he used to kill all nine people with money he received from his father for his 21st birthday, evidence in the case said.
Under that law, gun sellers can sell firearms to a buyer after three days regardless if the FBI’s background check has been completed. If a person faces felony charges, the gun store must deny the buyer that purchase. In Roof’s case, he was facing a felony drug charge but the FBI failed to discover that in its search of police databases. After three days, the gun store sold Roof the gun.
