LEXINGTON, S.C. (AP) -- An employee at the Lexington County jail entered the wrong information into a database of South Carolina arrests, allowing the man charged with killing nine people at a Charleston church to buy the gun authorities say was used in the attack.
Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon told The Associated Press on Monday the wrong information about which agency arrested Dylann Roof on a drug charge was corrected two days after his Feb. 28 arrest. That correction wasn't sent to the State Law Enforcement Division, which maintains the records that the FBI checks.
When the FBI did its check in April, an examiner called Lexington County deputies, who said the arrest took place in Columbia. Before the examiner could find the report, the waiting period expired and the gun was sold.
People gather outside the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 18, 2015. Police captured the white suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, the main suspect in a gun massacre at one of the oldest black churches in the United States, the latest deadly assault to feed simmering racial tensions. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
