CHARLESTON, S.C.—For about 20 harrowing minutes, Jennifer Pinckney huddled under a desk with her 6-year-old daughter, her hand clasped over the girl’s mouth to keep her quiet as Dylann Roof opened fire. Not knowing for certain if the danger had passed, Pinckney dialed 911 and breathlessly told an operator she had heard shots inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church.
“I think there’s been a shooting. I’m in the closet, under a desk,” Pinckney told the operator. “Please hurry.”
The conversation was played in court Wednesday for jurors considering whether Roof should be sentenced to death or life in prison. Roof, who is representing himself, hasn’t put up any fight for his life, saying he doesn’t plan on calling witnesses, and he has not cross-examined anyone.
In the tape, Pinckney is heard trying to comfort her daughter Malana, a precocious child who had been watching cartoons in her father’s office as he participated in Bible study in the room next door on the night of June 17, 2015.
“Daddy’s dead?” Malana is heard asking her mother on the 911 call.
“No, baby, no,” she said.
But at that moment, Pinckney said she knew her husband, church pastor Clementa Pinckney, was killed because otherwise he would have come to check on her and their daughter.
Jennifer Pinckney was the first witness called by prosecutors in the sentencing phase of Roof’s trial. The same jury that last month found the 22-year-old white man guilty of 33 federal charges, including hate crimes and obstruction of religion, is hearing testimony this week in his sentencing trial.
