Could Racism Be A Factor To Easter Tulsa Shootings?

It's getting worse. The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma is relieved that the apparent racially-motivated shooters are held in custody. Is this the sign of more on the way? Since the shooting of Trayvon Martin, more incidents are occurring often and we're noticing! Once again, with the first Black president, Barack Obama, the conservatives are riled up and they're capable of becoming violent.

2 held in deadly Tulsa shooting rampage; no charge

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS
Associated Press


TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- Police arrested two men suspected in a deadly shooting rampage that terrorized Tulsa's African-American community, and said online postings indicated one may have been trying to avenge his father's death.

Jake England, 19 (right), and Alvin Watts, 32 (left), were arrested early Sunday at a home in Turley, just north of Tulsa. Police identified both suspects as white, while all five victims in the early Friday shooting were black. England and Watts, who have not been charged, are expected in court Monday.

Police and the FBI cautioned that it was too early to say whether the attacks in Tulsa's predominantly black north side were racially motivated. Police spokesman Jason Willingham said that based on Facebook postings attributed to England, a wish to avenge the death of his father might have been a factor.

In a Facebook update Thursday that appeared to have been written by England, he blamed his father's death on a black man and used a racial slur. The posting said Thursday was the second anniversary of his father's death.

"It's hard not to go off," given the anniversary and the death of his fiancée earlier this year, the posting said.

"It's apparent from the posting on the Facebook page that he had an ax to grind, and that was possibly part of the motive," Willingham said. "If you read the Facebook post and see what he's accused of doing, you can see there's link between the two of them."

The Facebook page had been taken down by Sunday afternoon.

Jake England, 19 was arrested. Facebook page shows racial rant.

A family friend, Susan Sevenstar, told The Associated Press that England was "a good kid" and "a good, hard worker," who "was not in his right mind" after losing his father and the January suicide of his fiance, with whom he'd recently had a baby.

"If anybody is trying to say this is a racial situation, they've got things confused," said Sevenstar, who described England as Cherokee Indian. "He didn't care what your color was. It wasn't a racist thing."

The Tulsa World reported that England's father, Carl, was shot in the chest during a scuffle with a man who had tried to break into his daughter's apartment. England later died. The man charged in the shooting is serving a six-year sentence on a weapons charge, according to Department of Corrections records.

Acting on an anonymous tip and backed by a helicopter, police followed England and Watts from the home they shared in Turley and arrested them without incident, police said.

Authorities said they planned to charge them with murder and other offenses.

Task force commander Maj. Walter Evans said investigators recovered a weapon but that it was not clear who fired the shots. They also found a truck that had been burned.

It was not immediately known whether the suspects had lawyers.

The Rev. Warren Blakney Sr., president of the Tulsa NAACP, said the arrests came as a relief. Black community leaders met Friday night as fears mounted over the shootings - and the possibility of retaliatory attacks.

"The community once again can go about its business without fear of there being a shooter on the streets," Blakney said.

Police Chief Chuck Jordan said the gunmen appeared to have chosen their victims at random. Police identified those killed as Dannaer Fields, 49, Bobby Clark, 54, and William Allen, 31. Two men were wounded but were released from the hospital, Jordan said.

The shootings come at a fraught moment for black Americans. In late February, an unarmed black teen, Trayvon Martin, was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., raising questions about racial profiling and touching off protests across the nation.

While Tulsa police were reluctant to describe the shootings there 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."



More controversy upon the Trayvon Martin incident. The rise of right wing extremism, proven by the Department of Homeland Security. And it's getting worse.

Metro Detroit drivers shocked by racial slur on roadside sign referring to Trayvon Martin

DEARBORN (WXYZ) - A roadside construction sign spotted on the border of Detroit and Dearborn shocked metro Detroit drivers.

Someone changed the electronic sign to read "Trayvon..." followed by a racial slur.

The sign was spotted Sunday night on westbound I-94 near Michigan Avenue.

Police were notified by drivers and the sign was quickly taken down. It was up for about an hour.

Trayvon Martin is the Florida teenager whose death sparked nationwide outrage when he was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

His shooter claims the shooting was in self defense.

Martin's death has prompted hundreds of rallies across the country, even some in metro Detroit.


Ohio State University: Long Live Zimmerman Spray Painted On Black Culture Center!


COLUMBUS, Ohio (CBS Cleveland/AP) — Officials say graffiti spray painted on the wall of a black cultural center at Ohio State University likely stems from the nationwide unrest over the fatal shooting of a black Florida teenager.

The graffiti painted early Thursday said “Long Live Zimmerman.” Columbus media outlets report that officials believe it’s a reference to George Zimmerman, the neighborhood-watch captain accused of killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., in February.

Larry Williamson, executive director of The Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center, wants the person that did this brought to justice.

“We want the person brought to trial, caught,” Williamson told WBNS-TV. “We want to make sure these kinds of things don’t happen.”

Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee says university police are “vigorously investigating.”

“I was really outraged by this on a university that takes great pride in civility and respect,” Gee told WBNS. The graffiti has been removed.

It was discovered the same day a campus rally was held for Martin and Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi woman who was fatally beaten last month in her El Cajon, Calif., home

Zimmerman is white and Hispanic. His family insists he’s not racist.

A Muslim Woman Was Killed? I Am Assuming That Conservatives Don't Want Muslims Upset Over This Incident!

Courtesy of Think Progress

California Muslim Mother Beaten To Death, Left With Note Saying ‘Go Back To Your Country, You Terrorist’

By Ali Gharib

In the wake of the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida, another possible hate crime in California underscored the chasm between American values of equality and non-discrimination and incidents of intolerance.

A 32-year-old Iraqi victim of a brutal beating in her San Diego, California, home died yesterday when, with doctors’ expectations that she would not survive, her family removed her from life support. Shaima Alawadi’s family thinks the beating constitutes a hate crime, and police acknowledge the possibility.

Alawadi, a mother of five children aged 8 to 17, immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1993. On Wednesday, her eldest daughter, Fatima al-Himidi, found Aalwadi “drowning in her own blood.” Al-Himidi said her mother was beaten with a tire iron. The daughter told San Diego’s KUSI television news that a note near her mother read, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” (Another report said the note read, “Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.”)

“We’re not the terrorists,” al-Himidi said, speaking to the news camera, her voice shaky with emotion. “You are, whoever did it.”

The details of the story.

Iraqi woman fatally beaten in Calif. had fled Saddam's Iraq

EL CAJON, Calif. (AP) – Shaima Alawadi and her family fled Iraq nearly two decades ago as Saddam Hussein crushed a Shiite uprising, settling in the U.S. so they would no longer face persecution, a family friend said.

Alawadi, 32, grew up in the country's largest Iraqi enclaves, wore the Muslim headscarf and volunteered at the mosque.

Now, after her body was found severely beaten in her suburban San Diego home, police, the FBI and members of the Iraqi community are wondering whether her death was a hate crime or something else.

• STORY: Iraqi woman brutally beaten in Calif. will be buried in Iraq

Among the evidence that police have collected is a threatening note that was near Alawadi's body. Her daughter told a television station that it said: "Go back to your country, you terrorist."

El Cajon Police Chief James Redman declined to discuss the contents of the note Monday, though he said that it has led police to regard the killing as a possible hate crime. He said he was confident the case would be solved.

"I want to stress there is other evidence in this case that we are looking at and the possibility this is a hate crime is just one aspect," Redman said.

"We don't have tunnel vision on this case," he said. "We're looking at the big picture."

Redman said he was confident it was an isolated incident but would not say why.

The death rippled across the world, with Alawadi's name being mentioned on Twitter and the case being discussed in Iraqi communities in the San Diego and Detroit suburbs. Lawmakers in Baghdad called for a full investigation.

Her slaying was being compared to that of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teen shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer, said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Trayvon was black wearing a hoodie. Shaima was wearing a hijab," Walid said, referring to the Muslim headscarf. "It's the same racist principle at play that killed both of these individuals."

Others were more guarded, saying they wanted to wait for the investigation to unfold.

"It is absolutely devastating for the family and the community, so we need move on very, very cautiously. 

Emotions are high, but we need to make sure we let the professionals do what they need to do," said Hanif Mohebi, executive director of CAIR's San Diego chapter.

The chief said Alawadi died of severe head trauma. She was taken off life support Saturday, three days after her teenage daughter found her unconscious in the dining room of the family's El Cajon home, east of San Diego.

The victim's daughter, Fatima Al Himidi, told KUSI-TV in San Diego that her mother had been beaten on the head repeatedly with a tire iron, and the threatening note was next to her. Police would not confirm the type of weapon used in the attack.

Police said the family found another threatening note within the last month but did not report it to authorities. Mohebi said family members told him they dismissed the initial note as a prank.

The victim and her family fled Iraq in the early 1990s after a failed Shiite uprising, living in Saudi Arabian refugee camps before coming to the U.S., said Imam Husham Al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center in Dearborn, Mich.

Saddam's troops hanged Alawadi's uncle.

"She lost her uncle by Saddam," he said, "and when they came here to seek freedom, she got killed."

The family arrived in the Detroit area in 1993 and later moved to San Diego. Shaima Alawadi was a religious Shiite Muslim who wore a hijab and volunteered at a mosque, Al-Husainy said.

Alawadi's father, Sayed Nabeel Alawadi, is a cleric in Iraq, said Al-Husainy, who described himself as a close family friend.

Hayder Al-Zayadi, a family friend, told the Detroit Free Press that Alawadi's brothers worked for the U.S. Army, serving as cultural advisers to train soldiers who were going to be deployed to the Middle East.

Another family friend told U-T San Diego that Alawadi's husband had a similar job. Redman said Alawadi's husband was currently on disability and didn't know his previous employment.

Flowers were set on the doorstep of the home Monday. One of the glass panels on a sliding back patio door was boarded up with wood. The backyard overlooks a middle school.

Alvin Luckenbach, who lives next door, exchanged pleasantries with Alawadi and her husband. He said she recently apologized for her kids making noise playing basketball on Alawadi's back patio.

"They were always nice," Luckenbach said.

The Iraqi foreign minister said Monday that Alawadi's body will be flown to Iraq.

The FBI, which is assisting El Cajon police in the investigation, defines a hate crime as an offense motivated by a bias against race, religion, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation. There were 1,409 hate crimes nationwide based on religion during 2010, including 186 targeting Muslims. There were 1,040 based on ethnicity or national origin, including 359 targeting groups other than Hispanics.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.