Apparently, Dylann Roof showed signs he planned to commit a racially charged attack before he killed nine people at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina Wednesday night.

The mass shooting took place when Roof, a 21-year-old white man, opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church around 9 p.m. while the church members were praying. Among the nine people who were killed were the church's pastor, State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, 41. Three people survived.

Roof was then arrested in Shelby, North Carolina, after someone recognized him and alerted authorities. He is currently being held on a $1 million bail and has been charged with nine counts of murder and one weapon possession charge.

Friends said before the attack Roof recently got drunk and complained, "Blacks were taking over the world," according to his friend Joey Meek, reports WRAL. Meek said Roof added, "Someone needed to do something about it for the white race."

Roof also told him he used the birthday money his parents gave him to buy a .45-caliber Glock pistol before the attack.

When speaking to CNN, Meek said Roof normally kept to himself, but on that night he boasted about an unspecified six-month plan "to do something crazy." Roof also talked about returning to a system of segregation and his intention "to start a race war."

"He wanted it to be white with white, and black with black," Meek said. "He had it in his mind, and he didn't really let nobody know (what he was going to do)."

Although Roof made the remarks, Meek said, "I didn't take him serious.

"Dylann wasn't a serious person; no one took him serious. But if someone had taken him serious, this all would all have been avoided."

A former school mate of Roof named John Mullins told CNN on Thursday the suspect was "kind of wild" but not violent while they attended White Knoll High School. Mullins recalled Roof occasionally making racist comments, despite the fact that he appeared to have black friends.

"They were just racist slurs in a sense," he said. "He would say it just as a joke. ... I never took it seriously, but now that he shed his other side, so maybe they should have been taken more seriously."

According to Roof's uncle, Carson Cowles, the shooter's mother "never raised him to be like this," reports The Washington Post. "The whole world is going to be looking at his family who raised this monster. I'd be the executioner myself if they would allow it."