Transcript for Hero Florist Says Haircut, License Plate Helped Her Spot Dylann Roof
We heard interest that one dozen purple roses hero florist shop worker who spotted the suspect and Debbie Dills joins us live right now from Shelby, North Carolina along with police chief of Shelby, Jeffrey Ledford. Thank you both for being with us this morning and Debbie, let me start with you. Thank goodness that you saw something and you acted upon it. Just take us back to yesterday, what you saw. I was just on my way to work and had been watching a lot of the news coverage, started the night before and had been really thinking and praying about the people there and how horrific what happened to them was and I just can't imagine, I can't imagine in my heart of hears what was going on with them but I was just on my way to work and I had seen a lot of the coverage and I had seen pictures of the car and pictures of the young man and I just looked over and noticed the car and I couldn't figure out really why I was looking at it and then I realized I seen the car. I seen the South Carolina state -- the license plate on the car and then I seen the haircut, the things that, you know the news was telling us to look for or to look at and then I didn't want to believe it was him but turned out it was him. And you followed him for more than 30 miles. What were you doing -- were you concerned that he might notice that you were following him? I didn't follow him directly. I got off of the entrance and come back to -- I started back to the floral shop and called my boss. Who he's the one, Todd, the owner here is the one who guided me through and called the police and stayed on the phone for while I got back out on tobypass to follow him to see if I could get his tag number and everything. Oh, my goodness. Chief Ledford, when your office received the call what did you all do? Well, once the call came in, she told us where she was in the city then we were able to get our cars over to her, of course, at that point they followed in behind him, identified the car, make sure we got the right one and that's when they did their stop. Did the officers say how the suspect, how he reacted if he said anything? Was very cooperative the entire stop, no problems, no issues. He went peacefully so we had no problem with that part at all. Chief Ledford, many people were touched that before you addressed the media there that you called for church leaders to come, that you called for other community leaders to be there. Why was that important to you, sir? We did that after this got started. We're fortunate. We have a coalition locally, faith-based partnership, so to speak, so I had put something out to them, it had already gotten to the media, so I sent something out to a lot of our local clergy and said here's what we've got, first off we ask them, you know, keep our staff and the folks in Charleston in your thoughts and in your prayers and told them if they wanted to come up we'd be more than happy to have you, so they came up and were a tremendous asset to us, not only from a staff standpoint but from people who were coming to the department in the parking lot, obviously they had questions, emotions were up and down, so just having the whole community there along with us was important and it turned out to be a big payoff. It was very powerful, chief. It really was, chief Ledford, thank you. Debbie, bless your heart. I mean this is the person everyone was looking for. We're always told as citizens if you see something, do something and you did just that. Many were fearful of what he could possibly do next. So I know that was of concern to you, as well. So, Debbie, thank you. Chief Ledford, thank you very much. Our best to everybody there. Thank you. Thank you. You take care. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |