Mother who suspect stayed with before shooting: ‘He deserves what he has got coming’
When Kimberly Konzny welcomed 21-year-old Dylann Roof into her Lexington-area home late last month, she said she never would have guessed the quiet and polite young man would be capable of killing anyone.
Konzny – whose three sons also live with her – said during an interview Monday there was never anything amiss with Roof, who has been charged in Wednesday’s massacre of nine African-Americans at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.
“I heard about this shooting, and I was thinking ‘Oh my god,’” Konzny said. “(My son) showed me when they came out with his picture. He said ‘Momma that’s Dylann,’ and I was like ‘No it’s not.’ He said, ‘Yes it is. Look, look real close. That’s his shirt, those are his raggedy boots, there is his car.
“I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it was Dylann.”
Konzny said Roof and her son, Joey Meek, who were high school friends, reconnected in recent weeks. Roof stayed at her family home several times a week for about three weeks before the Charleston shootings, she said.
Roof dressed normally, had a quiet demeanor and never acted out in public, Konzny said. And while he didn’t voice many of his emotions, she added, he would go into his car when he became upset to smoke a cigarette and listen to opera music to calm down.
But Wednesday night, Roof, who is white, entered Emanuel church in Charleston and sat for roughly an hour in a Bible study group before opening fire, killing nine.
In the days following the shooting, Roof’s online manifesto revealed his alleged racial motives for the killings.
In interviews with other media outlets since the church shootings, Joey Meek said Roof on at least one occasion while drinking threatened violence, on a college campus. But Konzny said Roof never talked about race in front of her, and her son and his friends told her they thought he was joking.
But since the shooting, Konzny said Meek has felt guilty for not taking Roof’s threats seriously, thinking there was something he could have done to prevent the attack.
“There are those nine times out of 10 that people are just talking,” Konzny said. “But then there is that one time where they are serious.
“It’s hard to wrap my head around this,” Konzny said. “But he (Roof) deserves what he has got coming, because he killed nine innocent people. He is either going to be in jail or get the death penalty, and he deserves it. But I still care about him.
“He did a terrible thing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care for him, or still love him, or forgive him,” Konzny said. “I have to forgive him for myself to move on. ”
This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 7:13 PM with the headline "Mother who suspect stayed with before shooting: ‘He deserves what he has got coming’."