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Their hearts were heavy, however, to see what happened to neighbors whose businesses were just starting to recover after being closed because of the pandemic. The morning of May 31, the sisters saw the destruction up and down King Street and realized how blessed they were to have escaped the night undamaged. The chaos continued until about 2 a.m., then finally tapered off.

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They also wrote down the license plates of some of the looters’ cars and later shared them with police. So, she and the other sisters took pictures of the people doing the rioting. Sister Gioan saw people trying to take pictures of the sisters through the store windows.

In the meantime, they did what they could to document the situation. The sisters stayed downstairs for a while, hoping no one would target their store.

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While most of the people were on foot, Sisters Charlotte and Gioan noted that some cars picked up looters with their arms full of merchandise, while other cars dropped people off.

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Sister Charlotte said people shattered the windows of Rack Room Shoes across from the Pauline store and within minutes shoe boxes were scattered in the street. So they moved on to other shops up and down King Street, then started breaking restaurant windows. Rioters hit the Sunglass Hut directly across the street but could only damage that glass and not break it. Sister Charlotte went downstairs into the store, where she joined Sisters Lupe Hernandez and Gioan Linh Nguyen, who had come downstairs to see what was happening. She is usually based in Toronto and ended up staying in South Carolina longer than intended because COVID-19 halted travel between Canada and the U.S. Being in the middle of a riot had been the last thing on her mind when she arrived in Charleston in January to spend a few months helping at the store. Sister Charlotte Robert Morrison was in her room on the building’s second floor when she heard the yelling, then the sound of glass breaking. They were not the same people who had marched earlier in the day. Their ages ranged from teenagers to middle-aged adults. Sister Margaret said the people came not in one big group, but in smaller, isolated clumps. Rioters shattered windows, set fires, and robbed stores of everything from iPhones to clothing, athletic shoes and jewelry. King Street and the surrounding area, chock-full of popular restaurants and shops, became the nucleus of a wave of looting, vandalism and arson. as a byproduct of the Floyd protests, Charleston was not immune. On a night when violence tore through cities across the U.S. They were safely ensconced above their first-floor book and media store as they watched what was taking place below.

The Pauline sisters were about to have front-row seats to a riot from their second-floor residence. They chanted and marched and were very nice to our customers who were outside to pick up orders,” said Sister Margaret Kerry, local superior for the community and store manager. “During the day, the people coming by were peaceful. They had spent a long day serving customers and watching marchers who moved down King Street to a city landmark called the Battery, taking part in protests against the recent death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman.Īround 10 p.m., however, the sound of shouting alerted them that it was not going to be a normal night. Paul who live and work on Charleston’s King Street closed up their books and media store like normal May 30. (CNS photo/handout via The Catholic Miscellany)ĬHARLESTON, S.C. Paul clean up after the riots in Charleston, S.C.

The Charleston Young Adult Cathedral Group and members of the Charleston Police Department help the Daughters of St.

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