Two Suspects Confess In Tulsa Shooting

[General Mung Beans]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/us/tu ... r=1&ref=us

2 Tulsa Shooting Suspects Confess, Police Say
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: April 9, 2012

TULSA, Okla. — The two men accused of killing three black people and wounding two others in shootings that terrified this city over the Easter weekend confessed to the police shortly after their arrest Sunday morning, the authorities said on Monday.
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Arrests in Shootings End a Terrifying Weekend in Tulsa (April 9, 2012)


The men — Jacob C. England, 19, and Alvin L. Watts, 32 — were arrested after a series of shootings on Friday that city and community leaders believe were racially motivated attacks. Mr. England and Mr. Watts randomly shot pedestrians and residents as they drove a pickup truck through the predominantly black neighborhoods of north Tulsa, the authorities said.

Mr. England told the police that he shot three of the victims and Mr. Watts admitted to shooting two of them, said Officer Jason Willingham, a spokesman for the Tulsa police. Mr. England said he drove the pickup during all the shootings, Officer Willingham said.

Investigators were able to later determine that Mr. England shot one of the victims who died and the two who were wounded, and that Mr. Watts shot the two other fatal victims, Officer Willingham said.

The spokesman said he could not discuss what the two men said about their motivations during their interviews, citing the continuing investigation.

At a brief court hearing Monday morning, Special Judge William Hiddle announced bail for each man of $9.16 million: $3 million for each count of first-degree murder, $75,000 for each count of shooting with intent to kill and $10,000 for possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. The hearing was held at 9 a.m., and it was unclear whether the judge was aware of the confessions at that time; they were first reported late Monday by The Associated Press, based on the filing of a police affidavit.

Police officials and prosecutors said it was still too early in their investigation to say whether the shootings were racially motivated. “If we can figure out what the motivation was behind these killings and it sufficiently meets the elements of hate crime, then we’ll file a hate crime,” Tim Harris, the Tulsa County district attorney, said outside the courtroom Monday. “We’ll file what can be supported by the evidence.”

The shootings took place two years after Mr. England’s father, Carl, was shot and killed on April 5, 2010, at an apartment complex. The man who was a person of interest in the case, Pernell Jefferson, is black.

Mr. England posted a message to his Facebook page Thursday afternoon about his father’s death and the recent suicide of his 24-year-old fiancée, Sheran Hart Wilde, with whom he has an infant son.

“Today is two years that my dad has been gone,” he wrote, and then he used a racial slur to describe Mr. Jefferson. “It’s hard not to go off between that and sheran I’m gone in the head.”

Mr. England and Mr. Watts were not brought into the courtroom at Tulsa County District Court in downtown Tulsa, but appeared instead via closed circuit video from a room at the county jail, a routine procedure at the courthouse. Neither man made any statements as they stood before the camera, listening to the judge read the bail amounts. The two men were in orange jumpsuits with their hands cuffed.

Judge Hiddle set their arraignments for next Monday. They have not yet been appointed lawyers.

Two men and one woman were killed in the shootings: Dannaer Fields, 49; Bobby Clark, 54; and William Allen, 31. The two men who were wounded — identified on Monday afternoon by the police as Deon Tucker, 44, and his friend David Hall, 46 — were standing outside Mr. Tucker’s house on East 51st Place North about 1 a.m. Friday, when a pickup truck pulled up and the man or men inside asked them for directions, according to interviews with neighbors, friends and the authorities.

“They just came up and asked where a certain address was, and he told them it was down the street, and they just started shooting,” said Kevin Colbert, 40, Mr. Tucker’s friend, who lives next door and said Monday he had kept in touch with the wounded man since the shooting.

Mr. Tucker’s roommate, Michael Daugherty, 50, said that Mr. Tucker was shot in the back and that Mr. Hall was shot in the stomach. Both men were hospitalized but have been released.

Officer Willingham said investigators would also be looking into previous unsolved shootings in the area to see if any links can be made to the two suspects. “There’s nothing on our radar yet,” he said. “We will definitely go down that road, but it’s not going to be today. Job No. 1 at this point is wrapping up the five shootings.”

Though they stopped short of describing the attacks as racially motivated, several local and federal law enforcement officials, including the district attorney, Mr. Harris, said they found the shootings to be particularly disturbing. The commander of the multiagency task force set up by the Tulsa police to apprehend the suspects, Maj. Walter Evans, called the shootings the most heinous crimes he had seen in his 23 years in law enforcement.

Mr. England and Mr. Watts were friends and roommates, and they lived at Mr. England’s house in a rural part of Tulsa. They were arrested at another house in nearby Turley, Okla., where officials said they were hiding out to avoid capture.

[Esquire]

It'll be interesting to see how the trial goes - in the current climate, there's bound to be a lot of pressure to throw the book at England and Watts. Not that there appear to be any mitigating factors anyway, but still.