The feds have served notice to a second Charleston church shooting suspect that he’s under investigation for his role in concealing Dylann Roof’s mass murder plot this spring.
Federal authorities believe Joey Meek, the 21-year-old boyhood friend of Roof, had knowledge beforehand of the attack that left nine black parishioners dead at Mother Emanuel, including a state senator.
They also want to hold Meek accountable for failing to report the horrific crime once it had been committed, delaying the shooter’s immediate apprehension.
South Carolina’s famed African American church was specifically targeted on June 17, 2015 by white-supremacist gunman Dylann Roof in hopes of flaming a “race war,” the defendant has stated.
While the second suspect to be investigated in the Charleston church assault has cooperated throughout a probe of the atrocity, he’s being accused now of doing nothing whatsoever to prevent it.
According to Joey Meek’s own testimony, a mentally-impaired Roof told him well in advance of the public shooting that he was on a mission to violently “avenge” the white race because “blacks were taking over the world.”
Meek -- who has a criminal past himself and is currently on probation for grand theft auto -- was also aware that his unstable friend had purchased a firearm to carry out that racist vendetta.
Dylann Roof faces capital murder and hate-crime charges for the mass killings he perpetrated at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church this year.
The Associated Press reports that his defense attorneys recently approached federal prosecutors with a proposed guilty plea, in an attempt to expedite the case and to sidestep the death penalty.
