Two arrests follow shooting spree

Police swoop after triple slayings

UNITED STATES: Police arrested two white male suspects yesterday in shootings that left three black people dead and two more critically wounded in the Tulsa area.

The shootings had left the Oklahoma city’s black community on edge through the weekend.

Authorities had said they thought the shootings in a predominantly black neighbourhood by an attacker or attackers were linked because they all happened around the same time and all five victims were out walk- ing when they were shot. Tulsa police spokesman Jason Willingham said the two men were arrested at a house just north of Tulsa yesterday and were expected to face three charges of first-degree murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill.

‘‘We don’t have a motive at this time,’’ he said.

‘‘We are still asking questions and hopefully that will become clear in coming days.’’

Willingham identified the men in custody as 19-year-old Jake England and 32-year-old Alvin Watts.

He said they were taken to a downtown Tulsa police station for questioning.

He said police acted on a crimestoppers’ tip but he declined to specify what that tip was.

Willingham said authorities still faced many unanswered questions after the arrests.

‘‘We are going to turn over every rock,’’ he said of the investigation.

Willingham said he did not have any immediate details when asked if the men were armed when they were arrested.

He said police had begun moving to make arrests yesterday.

‘‘We been on them since early in the evening. We had been doing surveillance and using a helicopter,’’ he said.

Earlier, residents

of

Tulsa’s predominantly black north side said they were afraid a gunman was still roaming their neighbourhoods looking for victims after the five people shootings in a day.

‘‘We’re all nervous,’’ Renaldo Works, 52, said yesterday.

‘‘I’ve got a 15-year-old, and I’m not going to let him out late. People are scared. We need facts.’’

The shootings on Saturday happened around the same time within five kilometres.

One of the victims told police that the shooter was a white man driving a white pickup truck who stopped to ask for directions before opening fire.

Willingham said yesterday that the pickup was spotted in the area of three of the shootings.

More than two dozen officers are investigating the case, along with the FBI, the US Marshals Service and other agencies, Willingham said.

Barber Charles Jones, 40, said the north side had had its share of crime problems, but residents had never faced a series of random killings like these.

‘‘It’s pretty shocking,’’ Jones said. ‘‘We’ve never had any serialtype stuff.’’

At a neighbourhood park a couple of blocks from two of the shootings, parents kept close watch over their kids during an Easter egg hunt.

‘‘The first I heard of it, it sounded like some type of gangland thing,’’ said 47-year-old parent Wayne Bell, who was hiding plastic eggs in the grass. ‘‘Everybody’s asking why.’’ The Reverend Warren Blakney Sr, president of the Tulsa chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organisation, said ‘‘avid distrust’’ between the black community and the police department had raised concerns that the shootings wouldn’t be fully investigated, and he contacted police to emphasise the need for them to work together to avoid vigilantism.

‘‘We have

to

handle

this

be- cause there are a number of African-american males who are not going to allow this to happen in their neighbourhood,’’ he said.

Tulsa’s police department has been tainted by accusations of corruption.

Three ex-police officers and a former federal agent were sentenced to prison in December after a two-year investigation involving allegations of falsified search warrants, nonexistent informants, perjury and stolen drugs and money.

Two other ex-officers were acquitted of stealing money during an FBI sting but were fired after an internal affairs investigation.