Tulsa shooting suspects Jake England and Alvin Watts held on $9.16 million bond each

The Lookout

A Tulsa, Oklahoma, judge has ordered that Jake England and Alvin Watts—the two men arrested in connection with Friday's shooting spree that left three dead and two wounded—each be held on a $9.16 million bond.

The pair have been charged with three counts of murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill. They were arrested early Sunday just north of Tulsa.

Tulsa police are investigating whether the shootings were racially motivated.

Before their arrests, police cautioned that there was no evidence a hate crime had been committed. "There's a very logical theory that would say that that's what it could be," Tulsa police chief Chuck Jordan said on Saturday. "But I'm a police officer. I've got to go by evidence."

Survivors had initially described the gunman as a single white male driving a pickup truck "with its tailpipe hanging," reported the New York Times. According to police, the suspect had stopped to ask victims for directions before shooting them.

The north Tulsa neighborhoods where the shootings occurred were described as predominately black.

"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," Rev. Warren Blakney, a local pastor, told CNN.

"You have somebody white who has come into a community and taken shots at, killing black people" Jack Henderson, a city councilman, told the cable network. "To me, that would indicate that we have some kind of a racial problem."

According to the Wall Street Journal, police are "examining social media evidence" as part of the investigation:

England wrote on his Facebook page that his father had been shot to death on April 5, 2010, by a black man who is now serving a prison sentence for the crime, which was covered by local media. In postings last week, Mr. England used racial slurs to describe his father's killer.

He also made emotional references in online postings to the death of his fiancée in January, drawing concerned responses from some of his Facebook friends, including Mr. Watts.

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