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The New York Times/ ­- U.S., Sex, 13 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
One Fate in Tulsa for 3 Strangers
Familiar With Struggle
By MANNY FERNANDEZ TULSA, Okla. — Shortly
after midnight on Good Friday here, Bobby Clark was
standing at the corner, waiting for his brother. Dannaer
Fields was walking home after playing dominoes at a
friend’s house. William Allen was walking, too, headed
home after visiting his brother. In the close­-knit world
of north Tulsa, the three of them were strangers, two
men and a woman who happened to be out on the
streets late at night, in the middle of a mundane
moment. But they had more in common than they
could have imagined. The predominantly black
neighborhoods where they lived — home to crime,
poverty and hundreds of boarded­-up homes and
businesses — have known struggle, and so had they.
Mr. Clark, 54, who as a teenager was given a
diagnosis of schizophrenia, used to be homeless and
had moved in with his brother after being evicted from
the public­-housing apartment where he lived. Ms.
Fields, 49, overcame drug addiction; she, too, moved
in with her brother after an eviction. In a
three­-square­-mile area of north Tulsa in the span of
one hour on April 6, the authorities say, two men drove
up to Mr. Clark, Ms. Fields and Mr. Allen, asked them
for directions and then fatally shot them, part of a
series of attacks that left two others wounded and
terrified the second­-largest city in Oklahoma. The five
victims were black. One of the suspects, Alvin L.
Watts, 32, is white, and the other, Jacob C. England,
19, is an American Indian who has also described
himself as white. On Friday, prosecutors formally
charged Mr. England and Mr. Watts with hate crimes.
The two men were each charged with three counts of
first­-degree murder, two counts of shooting with intent
to kill and five counts of malicious harassment, the
equivalent of hate crimes under state law. The
shootings unfolded the day after Mr. England used a
racial slur on Facebook to describe the man he
believed had killed his father, Carl, in April 2010.
Prosecutors declined to file homicide charges against
the man who was a person of interest in the case,
Pernell Jefferson. They determined that Mr. Jefferson,
who is black, was justified using deadly force in
self­-defense under Oklahoma law. In a statement on
Friday, Doug Drummond, the first assistant district
attorney for Tulsa County, said he would not comment
about the specific evidence for any of the charges
against Mr. England and Mr. Watts, both of whom the
police said had confessed after their arrest on Sunday.
“Filing charges is the first step to obtain justice for the
victims and their families,” Mr. Drummond said. “This is
a tragic and senseless crime. Our office is committed
to holding those responsible accountable for their
actions.” The potential punishment on each
first­-degree murder charge is life with parole, life
without parole or the death penalty. Mr. Drummond
said the decision whether to seek the death penalty
against the two men would be determined later. The
charges were announced the day of the first funeral,
for Mr. Clark. At a chapel not far from the scenes of the
shootings, Mr. Clark’s brothers and relatives and
several black leaders and Tulsa officials, including the
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr.,
gathered before his coffin to sing and pray. In his
remarks to mourners and in an interview after the
service, Mr. Jackson likened Mr. Clark’s death to those
of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17­-year­-old who was
shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in
Florida, and Emmett Till, the 14­-year­-old whose
murder in Mississippi in 1955 was a catalyst of the civil
rights movement. “Emmett Till was not famous,” Mr.
Jackson said outside the Crown Hill Chapel. “Trayvon
Martin was not famous. And yet it is the power of the
blood of the innocent that often is redeeming to us all.”
Mr. Clark — who was the son of a school bus driver
and who grew up in the Seminole Hills public­-housing
complex — walked around the city with his
auburn­-colored acoustic guitar slung across his back,
and he would often play for friends at the downtown
Tulsa homeless shelter where he once stayed, the
Tulsa Day Center for the Homeless. He was
unemployed, and had survived on his disability check.
Every Tuesday morning, he would pick up a portion of
his check from the homeless center’s executive
director, Sandra Lewis, whom he had known for years.
“He was not the stereotypical version of a
schizophrenic man,” Ms. Lewis said. “Bobby didn’t
have a mean bone in his body. He was a very kind and
gentle man. Never cross. Never cranky. Never had a
bad day that I ever saw.” On Friday at the chapel, Ms.
Lewis and Mr. Clark’s relatives and friends reminisced
about him, telling stories about the Kool­-Aid that he
made so sweet no one else could drink it, and about
his love of Jimi Hendrix riffs. There was little anger
displayed for Mr. England and Mr. Watts by relatives
and friends, even after word spread that the two men
were being charged with hate crimes. “Justice needs
to be served,” said Donnie Clark, 56, one of Mr. Clark’s
three brothers. “We didn’t know them. Maybe if they
would have known us it wouldn’t have happened.” Ms.
Fields’s funeral is Saturday. Services for Mr. Allen, 31,
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