Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old Lexington, S.C. native, has been captured in connection to Wednesday night's shooting at a historically African-American Charleston church that left nine people dead.

The shooting at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church is being investigated as a hate crime, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on Thursday. The victims were killed "because they were black," Charleston police spokesman Charles Francis told CNN.

Roof, a white man, was apprehended by police at around 11:30 a.m. in Shelby, N.C., local news station WSOC TV reported. The shooter sat in the church for an hour before opening fire, according to reports. Of the nine victims, six were females and three were males. Three people survived the shooting.

Roof directly spoke to one of the people he chose to let live.

"Her life was spared, and (she was) told, 'I'm not going to kill you, I'm going to spare you, so you can tell them what happened,'" Charleston NAACP President Dot Scott told CNN. 

Roof has a criminal history. He has been arrested twice in "the last few months," according to Buzzfeed News. "On March 2 he was picked up in Lexington County and booked on drug possession charges and then on April 26, he was arrested in Richland County for trespassing," the site reported, citing court records.

One of Roof's uncles helped confirm the FBI suspicion of the shooter, Reuters reported.

"The more I look at him, the more I'm convinced, that's him," Carson Cowles, 56, said.

Cowles added that he believes Roof's father gave the shooter a .45 caliber hangun as a birthday present in April.

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