Australian Baseball Player Christopher Lane Killed By ‘Bored’ Teens In Oklahoma

Christopher Lane, a college baseball player from Australia, was reportedly shot and killed during a jog in Duncan, Okla., by a trio of “bored” teenagers. Two of the boys will stand for a murder trial.

Lane had been visiting his girlfriend and her family in the suburban Oklahoma neighborhood when he went out for the evening jog, reported CBS News. On his route, he passed a house where the three self-proclaimed bored boys spotted him and decided that they would kill him for sport, according to Police Chief Danny Ford.

The 17-year-old suspect Michael Dewayne Jones, the eldest in the group, had reportedly given police a detailed confession of the tragic incident. The other two boys –Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards Jr., 14 – had not been as cooperative.

All three of the boys appeared in court on Tuesday. Luna and Edwards were charged with first-degree murder and will be tried as adults, reported CBS Sports. Jones was charged with using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and with accessory to first-degree murder after the fact. He will also be tried in adult court but will be considered a youthful offender.

Jones, whose bail has been set at $1 million, can face anywhere from two years to life behind bars. The younger boys are being held without bail, and face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted on the first-degree murder charge.

On Friday, the three boys who felt that they had nothing better to do, allegedly got into a vehicle and followed Lane until ultimately shooting him in the back. “They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said: ‘There’s our target,'” Ford said. “The boy who has talked to us said, ‘We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.’” The boys may have previously killed an animal and planned on committing more murders, police told CBS Affiliate KWTV.

Lane, 22, had just returned to Oklahoma from a trip back home to Australia with his girlfriend, Sarah Harper. “He didn’t deserve any of this,” Harper, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s heartbreaking that it was such a random choice those guys made that drastically altered so many lives in the process.”

In Australia, along with mourning the loss of the much-beloved athlete, there’s palpable outrage. Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer is using the incident to criticize the gun laws in the United States. “Tourists thinking of going to the USA should think twice,” Fischer told the Herald Sun. “I am deeply angry about this because of the callous attitude of the three teenagers, (but) it’s a sign of the proliferation of guns on the ground in the USA.

– Chelsea Regan

Get Uinterview’s FREE iPhone App For Daily News Updates here.

Get the FREE Uinterview iPad app here and watch our videos anywhere.