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Tulsa shooting rampage suspects charged with murder | |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Two men accused of shooting five black people, three fatally, in an Oklahoma city on Friday have been charged at a court hearing with murder. | |
Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, face three counts of first-degree murder and two of shooting with intent to kill. | |
Bail was set at $9m (£5.6m) each. They will next appear in court on 16 April. | |
The two were arrested at a home in Tulsa on Sunday following an anonymous tip-off. | |
A helicopter was used in the operation to detain the suspects, who were roommates. | |
They appeared via CCTV from jail in front of a judge on Monday. | |
'Axe to grind' | 'Axe to grind' |
The three dead have been identified as Dannaer Fields, 49, Bobby Clark, 54, and William Allen, 31. | |
Two men wounded in the attacks have since been released from hospital. | |
None of the victims are thought to have known each other and all of them were out walking when they were shot within a 3-mile (4.8-km) radius early on Friday. | |
The north Tulsa area where the shootings took place is a predominantly black area, although law enforcement officials said it was too early to assume a racial motivation. | |
Police spokesman Jason Willingham said that Mr England may have had an "axe to grind" because of his father's death two years ago. | |
Carl England was shot in the chest in April 2010 during a fight with an African-American who had tried to break into his daughter's apartment. | |
The man convicted in the case is serving six years in jail on a weapons charge. | |
In January, Jake England also witnessed the death of his fiancee, Sheran Hart Wilde, 24, who according to reports shot herself in front of him. | |
Police said that on Thursday Mr England had posted a Facebook update, using a racial slur, that blamed his father's death on a black man. | |
"Today is two years that my dad has been gone shot by a [expletive] [racial epithet]," Mr England wrote on Thursday. "It's hard not to go off between that and sheran I'm gone in the head." | |
Shortly after Friday's shootings, Mr England reportedly posted again on Facebook: "People talking [expletive] on me for some [expletive] I didn't do it just mite be the time to call it quits... I hate to say it like that but I'm done if something does happen tonight be ready for another funeral later." | |
His Facebook page had been taken down as of Sunday. | |
Susan Sevenstar, a family friend, told the Associated Press that Mr England was "a good kid" who "was not in his right mind" since his father's death and fiancee's suicide. | |
Police could not confirm whether the suspects were armed when they were taken into custody. | |
Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan had earlier described the shootings as "vicious and cowardly attacks". | |
The Tulsa shootings come at a fraught time for African-Americans, amid continued protests over the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by a neighbourhood watch volunteer in Florida in February. | |
Tulsa City council's only black member, Jack Henderson, said he believed the two suspects simply had a grudge against black people. | |
Mr Henderson, who represents the district where the shootings took place, said he hoped prosecutors would pursue hate crime charges if the evidence pointed in that direction. | |
During weekend memorials for the victims, the city's religious leaders called for the community to come together. | |
Warren Blakney, a church minister and local president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, thanked police and the FBI, according to the Tulsa World newspaper. | |
"I should say to those that may be listening across the country, we are one America," Rev Blakney said. |