A man who admits killing nine black churchgoers in the US in 2015 did it in retaliation for perceived offences against his race, a prosecutor has said in his opening statements.
As Dylann Roof's trial began today lawyers warned jurors to brace themselves for details of the massacre at Charleston's historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on 17 June 2015.
The black South Carolina churchgoers who welcomed Roof to their bible study last year thought he was a harmless young man looking for a place to pray, but a survivor of the shooting he is accused of carrying out there called him "evil".
Nine people died in the shooting but three others at the bible study, including Felicia Sanders, 59, and her 11-year-old granddaughter, survived.
Ms Sanders said she played dead beside her dying son, Tywanza Sanders, 26, and aunt, Susie Jackson, 87.
Roof, an avowed white supremacist, faces 33 federal counts of hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations stemming from the attack.
The 22-year-old also will face the death penalty in a state murder case.
"He is evil," Ms Sanders said. "There is no place left on earth for him except the pit of hell."
Roof scouted the church for months, stockpiled ammunition and practised firing the gun he bought in 2015, according to Assistant US Attorney Jay Richardson.
On the night Roof carried out his plan, he waited until parishioners stood to pray about 30 minutes into their meeting before firing his .45-caliber pistol, Mr Richardson said.
His first target was the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a state senator, who had offered Roof the seat beside him at the bible study.
Spouting white supremacist views, Roof then shot and killed the man, the prosecutor said.
Roof told Polly Sheppard, who was praying out loud, that he would let her live to tell the story of what he had done.
He confessed to the killings to federal agents when he was apprehended in North Carolina after an overnight manhunt.
Mr Richardson said Roof had been spreading his message before the shootings by publishing an online racist manifesto and writing in his journal about his hopes for a race war.
Defence attorney David Bruck told jurors the facts of the crime were not in dispute and began laying the groundwork to argue for a life sentence rather than execution, asking jurors to focus on what factors drove Roof to commit an act that made no sense.
"By my count, (Roof) said, 'I had to do it' about 10 times. What does that suggest to you?" Mr Bruck asked.
"Watch carefully his dispassionate affect and ask yourself what that means".
Roof, who served as his own lawyer for about a week during jury selection, has told US District Judge Richard Gergel he wants to act as his own counsel again during the sentencing phase of the trial.
