Feds probing SC shooting as hate crime

The Department of Justice has opened a hate crime investigation into the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C., Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Thursday.

“We will do everything in our power to help heal this community and make it whole again,” Lynch said in remarks before a briefing on Medicare fraud actions.

{mosads}”Acts like this have no place in our country,” she added.

In addition to the FBI, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Attorney’s Office are working with local authorities on the case, Lynch said.

Nine people were killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday evening, after a gunman opened fire.

The suspect in the shooting, Dylann Storm Roof, allegedly attacked the congregation about an hour after the worship service began. He was reportedly apprehended by police on Thursday morning in Shelby, N.C.