In brief: Police say shooting suspects confessed

TULSA, Okla. – The two suspects arrested in a shooting spree that terrorized Tulsa’s black community have both confessed, police documents say.

The documents given to the Associated Press on Monday say 19-year-old Jake England confessed to shooting three people and 32-year-old Alvin Watts confessed to shooting two.

The shootings early Friday morning left three people dead and two seriously wounded. It’s not clear from the affidavit which man shot which victim, but the document says police believe Watts shot two of the three people who died.

All the victims of the shooting spree were black, and police have described the suspects as white.

Police have said one motive for the shootings may have been England’s desire to avenge his father’s fatal shooting by a black man two years ago.

Meltdown particles found off California

LOS ANGELES – Radioactive particles released in the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami were detected in giant kelp along the California coast, according to a recently published study.

Radioactive iodine was found in samples collected from beds of kelp in locations along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz about a month after the explosion, according to the study by two marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach.

The levels, while most likely not harmful to humans, were significantly higher than measurements prior to the explosion and comparable to those found in British Columbia and northern Washington after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, according to the study published in March in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Death is first known suicide from bridge

LAS VEGAS – The death of a woman who jumped from the Hoover Dam bypass bridge was the first known suicide since the sweeping arch linking Nevada and Arizona opened in October 2010, a federal official said Monday.

Federal police were unable to persuade the woman not to jump from the pedestrian walkway overlooking the dam late Saturday, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Rose Davis told the Associated Press.

The woman’s body was discovered downstream Sunday morning by kayakers on the Colorado River, almost 900 feet below the span.

Davis called the suicide the first that federal officials know of at the Michael O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which carries U.S. Highway 93 between Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Results of Kinkade autopsy pending

SAN JOSE, Calif. – An autopsy was performed Monday for Thomas Kinkade, the popular painter who died at his Northern California home.

The Santa Clara County coroner’s office said the results of Monday’s autopsy may not be available for weeks if toxicology tests are required.

Kinkade family spokesman David Satterfield said the 54-year-old painter died Friday of apparent natural causes.