From the trial of Dylann Roof:
[Testimony of Felicia Sanders]
“Next thing I know, bullets started flying everywhere.”
She said she was lying under the table, holding her 11-year-old granddaughter, who was saying, “Granny, I’m so scared.”
“I said, just be quiet, just play dead. I squeezed her face to my body so tight that I thought I suffocated her,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
As she lay there, her son, Tywanza, was on one side of her and Jackson, her aunt, was on the other, both of them shot. “I could feel the warm blood flowing on either side of me.”
She said Roof confronted “Miss Polly” Sheppard and told her that he would spare her so she could tell the world what he had done.
At that moment, she said, Tywanza stood up to confront Roof and protect Sheppard.
From the witness stand, Sanders looked directly at Roof, her face covered with tears.
“The defendant over there, with his head hanging down, refusing to look at me right now, said, ‘I have to do this because y’all are raping our women and taking over the world.’ ”
“That’s when he put about five bullets in my son,” she said.
Overcome with emotion, Sanders said, “Seventy-seven shots in that room, from someone we thought was looking for the Lord.”
She said the Bible study group had welcomed him, and “he just sat there the whole time, evil, evil, evil as can be.”
Sobs began rising from the gallery of about 30 or 40 friends and family members. One woman had to leave the courtroom.
Sanders continued:
“As the defendant was leaving, my son started screaming, ‘Aunt Susie! Aunt Susie!’ ”
“I said, ‘Tywanza, lay still.’ ”
She said Sheppard had already called 911.
She said Tywanza said, “I got to get to Aunt Susie” and started crawling toward her.
She told him: “I love you, Tywanza. I love you, Tywanza.”
She said he replied: “I love you too, mom.”
She said he asked for water and said he couldn’t breathe.
She said to Sheppard, “Please help my son.”
Sheppard grabbed a white tablecloth off a table and went toward Tywanza.
“Then we watched him take his last breath,” Sanders said. “I watched my son come into this world, and I watched my son leave this world.”
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