1 Attachment(s)
Jake England Sentenced in 2012 OK Random Shootings
Attachment 129
Authorities in Oklahoma arrested two people early Sunday in connection with a deadly spate of random shootings in Tulsa that had residents on edge.
About 30 representatives from four law enforcement agencies -- the Tulsa police, Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI -- had been working round-the-clock looking for the person that authorities say killed three people and wounded two others in shooting attacks early Friday.
The police identified the arrested men as Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32.They will be charged with three counts of murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill, the department said.
Officials did not offer a motive.
The news will undoubtedly come as relief to residents, many of whom had changed their daily habits since the shooting. Just blocks from where two of the shootings occurred in the predominantly black neighborhoods in north Tulsa, Philip Hargett moved his trash cans from the side of his home to the front so he would never have his back to the street.
"It's going to be a couple of days for all of us to get over this," Hargett told CNN affiliate KOKI in Tulsa on Saturday night. His wife, Migdalia, said the shootings "scare the daylights out of me."
Venecia Williams, a mother and a grandmother who lives in the area, said she was afraid because she just didn't know what might happen next.
"That many shootings in one night?" she said. "That's quite a concern." After the shooting, a survivor described the suspect as a white man, driving an "older" white pickup truck, said Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan.
Police Capt. Jonathan Brooks told CNN that such a truck had been spotted at least three of the shooting sites, around that time.Both England and Watts are white. All the victims were black.
The first shooting occurred at 1:03 a.m. Friday. That victim, 49-year-old Dannaer Fields, died at a hospital.
Three minutes later, two other people were shot, authorities said. One of them "pretty close to the (gunman's) vehicle and the other ... a little further away," said Brooks, the police captain. Those two were initially in critical condition but, by Saturday evening, were expected to survive, he said.
Then, just before 2 a.m., another person was shot and killed.
The body of a third person was found around 8 a.m. next to a funeral home in a more commercial district, though Brooks said police believe he was shot much earlier.
George Riley, the funeral director at Jack's Memory Chapel, said he was shocked that one of the shootings played out virtually on his doorstep.
"I consider it a war zone," Riley, a Vietnam War veteran, told KOKI. "I don't want to say it's scary, but it can be scary."
In addition to Fields, Jordan identified the other two victims as William Allen and Bobby Clark.
"It appears all the victims were out walking or in the yard," Brooks said. "This (happened in) a residential neighborhood, predominantly single-family dwellings, except for the last victim.
"The Rev. Warren Blakney, a pastor at a city church and president of the NAACP's Tulsa branch, said the shootings could well prove to be hate crimes given that they happened in a predominantly black neighborhood.
"For a white male to come that deep into that area and to start indiscriminately shooting, that lends itself for many to believe that it probably was a hate crime," Blakney told CNN.
Brooks, the police captain, said one survivor recalled how "the suspect drives up to him, asks ... for directions and shoots him for no reason." There is no indication the shooter used a racial slur or said anything else that might indicate his motive, according to police.
"Right now, I'm more worried about three of my citizens being murdered," the chief said. "And if it takes us in a direction of a hate crime, that's certainly where we'll go and we'll prosecute him for that as well."
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