Clerical error acknowledged in US church shooting gun buy

An employee at the Lexington County jail entered the wrong information into a database of South Carolina arrests, allowing the man charged with killing nine people at a Charleston church to buy the gun authorities say was used in the attack.

Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon told The Associated Press today the wrong information about which agency arrested Dylann Roof on a drug charge was corrected two days after his Feb 28 arrest.

That correction wasn’t sent to the State Law Enforcement Division, which maintains the records that the FBI checks.

When the FBI did its check in April, an examiner called Lexington County deputies, who said the arrest took place in Columbia. Before the examiner could find the report, the waiting period expired and the gun was sold.