Dayton Daily News
TULSA, Okla. — Police documents filed in court say the two suspects arrested in a shooting rampage that terrorized Tulsa’s black community have confessed.
An affidavit filed Monday says 19-year-old Jake England confessed to shooting three people and 32-year-old Alvin Watts confessed to shooting two. Three died and two were wounded.
A judge set bail at $9.1 million each.
The suspects were not brought into the courtroom for the brief hearing at Tulsa County District Court but instead appeared via a closed-circuit video feed from the Tulsa County Jail.
The two - handcuffed and wearing orange jumpsuits - approached a podium to listen as the judge, William Hiddle, set bail. Watts and England are each facing three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of shooting with the intent to kill and one count of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Neither suspect spoke.
An arraignment - where they will likely enter a plea - was scheduled for Monday.
Many city and community leaders have said that the shootings were racially motivated, but District Attorney Tim Harris of Tulsa County said Monday that the authorities were trying to determine whether the attacks constituted a hate crime.
While Tulsa police were reluctant to describe the shootings as racially motivated, City Councilman Jack Henderson was not.
“Being an NAACP president for seven years, I think that somebody that committed these crimes (was) very upset with black people,” Henderson said. “That person happened to be a white person, the people they happened to kill and shoot are black people. That fits the bill for me.”
The three people who were killed were identified as Dannaer Fields, 49; Bobby Clark, 54; and William Allen, 31.
Late Thursday afternoon, England had posted a message on his Facebook page expressing grief and anger over the second anniversary of his father’s death. His father, Carl England, was shot April 5, 2010, at a Tulsa apartment complex, and the man who was a person of interest in the case, Pernell Jefferson, is serving time at an Oklahoma state prison on a weapons charge but has never been charged in the killing.
England is an American Indian who has also described himself as white. Jefferson is black.
“Today is two years that my dad has been gone,” wrote England, who went on to use a racial slur to describe Jefferson. “It’s hard not to go off between that and sheran I’m gone in the head,” he added, referring to January suicide of his 24-year-old fiancee, Sheran Hart Wilde, with whom he had a baby. “RIP. Dad and sheran I Love and miss u I think about both of u every second of the day.”
Hours later, the authorities say, England and Watts, his friend and roommate, went on a shooting rampage in the predominantly black neighborhoods of north Tulsa, driving through the streets randomly shooting pedestrians early Friday.
Copyright 2012 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.