Shooting at house of worship in South Carolina, police say
One person was shot in a South Carolina house of worship over the weekend, according to the Moncks Corner Police Department.
At about noon Sunday, police said they responded to a report of a shooting at the Muhajirun Wal Ansar mosque.
The person who made the call said they were the shooting victim, and officers found a person who had been shot multiple times, police said in a news release. That’s near U.S. 52 in Moncks Corner, not far from Lake Moultrie.
The victim was taken to Trident Hospital, and as of Sunday were listed in stable condition, according to the release. Further information on the victim’s condition was not available.
No other injuries were reported.
Information about the shooting was not available.
The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office helped locate a person of interest, who has not been publicly identified, police said. The person of interest is in police custody, but information on any criminal charges was not available.
There was no word on a connection between the victim and the person of interest, or a motive for the gunfire, but the shooting continues to be investigated by police.
“We want to reassure the community that there is no ongoing threat to public safety, and we are working diligently to resolve this matter,” police said in the release.
Infamous church shooting
This was not the first time a shooting has occurred in a Lowcounty house of worship.
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof opened fire during bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where he killed nine people and wounded another.
Roof, a self-avowed white supremacist from the Columbia area, was convicted on 33 federal charges and was sentenced to death in 2017. Roof told FBI agents he was hoping to start a race war.
Roof was the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
Clementa Pinckney, Sharonda Singleton, Daniel Simmons Sr., Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson and DePayne Middleton-Doctor were shot and killed at the church also called Mother Emanuel AME.
Roof appealed his conviction, but in 2021 the sentence was unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“His crimes qualify him for the harshest penalty that a just society can impose,” the judges wrote in 2021.
Roof also pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder in state court and received nine life sentences.
Roof was one of three federal death row inmates who was not given a reprieve by former President Joe Biden in the last days of his administration, when he commuted the sentences of 37 other inmates on federal death row.
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