CHARLESTON, S.C. _ For the first time since testimony in the death penalty trial of Dylann Roof started, the jury got to hear his voice.
"I went to that church in Charleston, and, uh ... I did it," said Roof in a video confession taken by the FBI at the Shelby, N.C., police department where he was being held after he was arrested.
Roof, then 21, told investigators that he went through seven magazines when shooting black parishioners at Charleston's historic Emanuel AME Church on June 17, 2015.
When asked how many people he shot, Roof said he didn't know.
"If I was going to guess ... five," Roof said. "Maybe? I'm really not sure exactly."
Roof told FBI agents he was pacing around in the church while he shot parishioners, because he was "freaking out" a little bit. When the court paused the video and took its morning break, Roof took a visible deep breath and drank a cup of water.
For the most part, Roof behaved himself on Friday in the same manner he has in previous days: staring directly at the table before him and, at times, shuffling through papers on the table.
When the court resumed, the part of the video where he explained why he did the shooting played.
"Well, I had to do it because somebody had to do something, because black people are killing white people every day in the streets," said Roof on the video. "The fact of the matter is that what I did is minuscule to what they're doing to white people all of the time."
When Roof was asked by the FBI investigator if it was true that he told one of the parishioners he was leaving her alive so that she could relive to tell the story, Roof leaned back in the video.
"Yeah," he said chuckling.
