Aussie baseballer gunned down by US teens

yebocan

yebocan

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Sydney - An Australian family was on Monday struggling to come to terms with the "senseless" death of their baseballer son in a random drive-by shooting by three teenagers in the United States.

Chris Lane, aged 22, was in the US on a baseball scholarship and was jogging in the small town of Duncan in Oklahoma when he was shot in the back on Friday and left to die on the side of the road.

Three teenagers aged 15, 16 and 17 were arrested and face the death penalty, Danny Ford, chief of Duncan Police Department, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"He apparently was jogging. He went by a residence where these three boys were, they picked him as a target, they went out and got in a vehicle and followed him," Ford said.

"Came up from behind and basically shot him in the back with a small calibre weapon, then sped away."

‘So senseless’

The killing has made headlines in Australia and in a separate interview with Australian Associated Press, Ford said it appeared the teenagers were on a "killing spree" after leaving a chilling message on Facebook.

"They wanted to be Billy Bob Badasses," he said.

"I think they were on a killing spree. We would have had more bodies that night if we didn't get them."

On one of the alleged killer's Facebook pages investigators said they found the message: "Bang. Two drops in two hours", AAP reported.

Lane's devastated father Chris said his death was so pointless.

"There's not going to be any good come out of this because it was just so senseless," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"There wasn't anything he did or could have done. He was an athlete going for a jog like he would do five or six days a week in terms of his training schedule.

"He was just a kid on the cusp of making his life. To try and understand it is a short way to insanity."

Baseball Australia said it was shocked by the circumstances of Lane's death.

"Baseball Australia is deeply saddened to hear of the tragic passing of Chris Lane, a very talented and bright young player," it said on its website.


- AFP

http://www.news24.com/World/News/Aussie-baseballer-gunned-down-by-US-teens-20130819
 
Teenagers thinking they're invincible, big and tough. Reality will kick in once they realize just how big and brutal the giant of the law really is, much tougher than they imagined. probably wetting themselves right now. Hope it was worth it, idiots.
 
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say the teens could face the death penalty? Unless of course the courts have already decided this.
 
Sounds like a gang initiation thing. Kill someone for acceptance. Senseless
 
Australian Player killed by bored Teens: Police

An Australian baseball player out for a jog in an Oklahoma neighborhood was shot and killed by three "bored" teenagers who decided to kill someone for fun, police said.

Christopher Lane, who was visiting the town of Duncan, where his girlfriend and her family live, had passed a home where the boys were staying and that apparently led to him being gunned down at random, Police Chief Danny Ford said Monday. A 17-year-old in the group has given a detailed confession to police, but investigators haven't found the weapon used in last week's shooting, Ford said.

That teen and the others - ages 15 and 16 - remain in custody, and Ford said the district attorney is expected to file first-degree murder charges Tuesday. It wasn't known if the three will be charged as adults or juveniles. They are to appear in court Tuesday afternoon.

"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.'"

He said they followed the 22-year-old Lane, a student from Melbourne attending college on a baseball scholarship, in a car and shot him in the back before driving off.

Ford told the television station KOCO in Oklahoma City that one of the teens said they shot Lane for "the fun of it."

"He didn't deserve any of this," Lane's girlfriend, Sarah 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."

Witnesses rushed to help Lane after hearing a shot Friday and seeing him stagger and collapse on a road in Duncan, a south-central Oklahoma town of about 24,000 residents.

"He was face down on the ground and he was shot in the back with a .22 revolver," builder Richard Rhodes told Australian broadcasters near a roadside memorial at the scene. "I had another lady stop and we tried CPR on him. And he passed away right here."

Harper said she and Lane had only returned to the United States from Australia last week.

Lane attended East Central University in Ada, about 85 miles (137 kilometers) west of Duncan. He started 14 games at catcher last year and was entering his senior year.

"He was an absolute joy to coach," baseball coach Dino Rosato said in a statement issued by the school. "Chris was an extremely well-respected teammate. ... He set a great example for all of his teammates, but more importantly for the younger players. He was a mature student-athlete who his teammates could look to for advice and support."

Peter Lane told Australian broadcasters there was no explanation for his son's death.

"It is heartless and to try to understand it is a short way to insanity," he said.

Ford wouldn't say how many times Christopher Lane was shot. Autopsy results are pending.


Source : Sapa-AP /pk
Date : 20 Aug 2013 10:29
 
They should line those teens up and shoot them "for fun" from bottom to top until death.
 
Gozzy said:
They should line those teens up and shoot them "for fun" from bottom to top until death.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Shooting someone for fun, being shot for fun. By their logic they are one in the same, so by all means, let's have some fun boys what you say? No? Tough sh$t!:)
 
3 Teens Charged

With a motive that's both chilling and simple - to break up the boredom of an Oklahoma summer - three teenagers randomly targeted an Australian collegiate baseball player who was attending school in the U.S. and killed him for fun, prosecutors said Tuesday as they charged two of the boys with murder.

Prosecutor Jason Hicks called the boys "thugs" as he described how Christopher Lane, 22, of Melbourne, was shot once in the back and died along a tree-lined road on Duncan's well-to-do north side. He said the three teens chose Lane at random and that one of the boys "thinks it's all a joke."

Hicks charged Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards, Jr., 15, with first-degree murder. Under Oklahoma law they will be tried as adults. Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, was charged with using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and with accessory to first-degree murder after the fact. He is considered a youthful offender but will be tried in adult court.

Jones wept in the courtroom after he tried to speak about the incident but was cut off by the judge who said it wasn't the time to sort out the facts of the case. Jones faces anywhere from two years to life in prison if convicted on the counts he faces.

The two younger teens face life in prison without parole if convicted on the murder charge.

"I'm appalled," Hicks said after the hearing. "This is not supposed to happen in this community."

In court, Hicks said Luna was sitting in the back seat of a car when he pulled the trigger on a .22 caliber revolver and shot Lane once in the back. Hicks said Jones was driving the vehicle and Edwards was in the passenger seat.

Edwards has had prior run-ins with the law and came to court Friday -apparently after the shooting - to sign documents related to his juvenile probation.

"I believe this man is a threat to the community and should not be let out," Hicks said as he requested no bond for Edwards. "He thinks it's all a joke."

The two younger boys were held without bond; bond was set at $1 million for Jones.

Before the hearing, Edwards' father, James Edwards Sr., said he knew where his son was 95 percent of the time and would call or text him. The 15-year-old was involved in wrestling and football, his father said, and was trying to forge the same sort of athletic career as Lane. He was heading into his sophomore year in high school.

Edwards Sr. said Luna was also like a son to him.

Luna's mother, Jennifer Luna, said her son likes to play basketball at a local court and play on his iPhone and Xbox.

"I know my son. He is a good kid," she said.

Lane played baseball at East Central University in Ada, east of Duncan, and had been visiting his girlfriend and her parents in Duncan after he and his girlfriend returned to the U.S. from Australia about a week ago.

Duncan police Chief Dan Ford has said the boys wanted to overcome a boring end to their summer vacation - classes in Duncan resumed Tuesday - and that Jones told officers they were bored and killed Lane for "the fun of it."

Family and friends on two continents were mourning Lane, who gave up pursuit of an Australian football career to pursue his passion for baseball, an American pastime. His girlfriend, Sarah Harper, tearfully laid a cross at a streetside memorial in Duncan, while half a world away, an impromptu memorial grew at the home plate he protected as a catcher on his youth team.

"We just thought we'd leave it," Harper said as she visited the memorial in Duncan. "This is his final spot."

His old baseball team, Essendon, scheduled a memorial game for Sunday to raise funds for Lane's parents as they worked to have their boy's remains sent home. Meanwhile, Essendon Catholic School, where Lane was a student, planned to remember him at a memorial Mass in November.

Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper reported that roses and a baseball were placed Monday on the home plate where Lane played as a youth with the message, "A wonderful young man taken too soon. Why?"

Former Australia deputy prime minister Tim Fischer criticized the National Rifle Association and asked Australians to avoid the U.S. as a way to force its Congress to act on gun control.

"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. There is a gun for almost every American."

---

Follow Kristi Eaton on Twitter at twitter.com/kristieaton .


Source : Sapa-AP /mjs
Date : 21 Aug 2013 03:01
 
quite frankly, i would like to know why obaman, al sharpton and jesse jackson haven't said a word here. they have gone into hiding it would seem.
 
Because when it's senseless white on black crime, they are all over it ;)
 
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