Mass-murdering racist Dylann Roof prepared for the deadly rampage at a black South Carolina church by honing his killing skills with a 21st birthday present from his father — a .45-caliber handgun.
A troubled portrait of Roof emerged as the shocked nation mourned nine people — ranging from 26 to 87 — gunned down because of their race at a prayer meeting.
In the aftermath of Wednesday night’s massacre at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Roof’s own uncle called him “a monster.”
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A friend, Joseph Meek, 20, told the Daily News he had taken the .45 Glock away from Roof two weeks ago after Roof went on a drunken, bigoted rant about segregation and killing people.
“He said he was planning for about six months to do something crazy,” said Meek, who is white. “He wanted it to be segregated. He wanted it to be white with the white, black with the black. All the races segregated.
“He wanted to do something big, like the Trayvon Martin case,” said Meek, referring to the unarmed black teen gunned down in 2012 in Florida by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. “He was upset about it. It made him mad.”
Meek said he took the gun away but, prompted by his own legal troubles, returned it the next day.
“I only took it away because he was drunk. I didn’t take him seriously,” Meek said. “I do feel a little guilty because I could have let someone know.”
He said he called the FBI on Thursday once surveillance photos of Roof were made public. The call helped agents identify Roof.
Roof’s uncle, Carson Cowles, said the suspect’s dad, Ben Roof, gave him the pistol for his 21st birthday in April — a present that delighted the shy young man with a bowl haircut.
Cowles told The News he believed it was the first gun Dylann ever possessed. He last spoke to him a day after he got the pistol, recalling his nephew barely could put down the firearm to talk.
“He said, ‘I got to go, I’m outside shooting target practice right now,’ ” Cowles said. “He sounded happy about it.”
Cowles said he and his family were racking their brains to determine how they missed the red flags leading up to the Charleston bloodbath.
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A survivor of the church shooting spree told cops that as Roof unleashed a barrage of bullets, he made it clear he was there to kill black people, saying, “You rape our women and are taking over our country.”
Cowles said that while Roof was quiet and kept to himself, he was never diagnosed with mental illness or, as far as he was aware, harbored hate for blacks.
“My family is nothing like this,” Cowles told The News. “We could’ve never seen anything like this — no way, shape or form.”
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On Thursday, Cowles was calling for his nephew’s hide.
“He’s a monster . . . and he needs to pay for what he’s done,” Cowles said.
Reached by The News in Columbia, S.C., Thursday, Roof’s grandfather, Joe Roof, would only describe Dylann as “a great grandkid.”
Another friend, Dalton Tyler, 20, said Roof talked openly about wanting segregation and his desire to start a civil war. He recalled Roof once yelling a racial slur and threatening a black woman for merely looking at him.
“He told her, ‘What the f–k you looking at, n—-r! I’ll shoot your ass,’ ” Tyler told The News.
On his Facebook page, Roof posted more hints that he hated black people. In a profile photo, he posed scowling and wearing a black jacket emblazoned with an apartheid-era South African flag and another representing the former white supremacist African state of Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe.
Another photo posted to social media shows Roof sitting on the hood of his black 2000 Hyundai Elantra GS with a Confederate flag plate on the front bumper.
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Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights group, said Roof’s name never crossed their radar. It remained unclear whether Roof had links to any of the 16 known white supremacist organizations in South Carolina.
Records obtained by The News showed Roof had several run-ins with the law. He was arrested Feb. 28 at Columbia’s Columbiana Centre shopping mall on drug charges. A cop confronted Roof, who was dressed in all black, because several mall employees complained he was asking bizarre questions, such as, “What time do you close?” and “How many associates are working?”
Roof nervously explained that he was asking the questions because his parents wanted him to get a job. He was arrested after a search turned up a bottle containing strips of Suboxone, a narcotic used to treat opiate addiction, which he didn’t have a prescription for.
Roof, who had been banned from the mall for a year, was arrested for trespassing there on April 26 when cops caught him in the parking lot. The mall then put him on a three-year ban.
Records also show that Roof didn’t have much of an education. He attended White Knoll High School in Lexington, S.C., but dropped out after repeating the ninth grade.
“He barely attended school here,” a school official told The News. “He was in and out.”
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Edgar Sandoval reported from Charleston, S.C.
