An Australian college student gets gunned down in Oklahoma:
A rural Oklahoma shooting has drawn widespread attention in Australia after a visiting student was randomly shot and killed by “bored” teenagers looking for a target, police said.
Chris Lane, 22, a baseball player on scholarship with East Central University, was reportedly shot in the back Friday while jogging in the small town of Duncan in southern Oklahoma. Lane, a catcher, was from Melbourne, Australia.
Three teens, ages 15, 16 and 17, saw him running by and followed him in a car before shooting him, Duncan police Chief Danny Ford told the Associated Press.
“They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said: ‘There’s our target,’ ” Ford told the AP. “The boy who has talked to us said, ‘We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.'”
Suspects have been charged. Three teens, jeesh…
DUNCAN, Okla. — Two Oklahoma teenagers accused of killing an Australian baseball player as he jogged are automatically being charged as adults.
Prosecutors charged 15-year-old James Francis Edwards Jr. and 16-year-old Chancey Allen Luna with first-degree murder on Tuesday. Police say the two killed 22-year-old Christopher Lane on Friday to overcome boredom. Under Oklahoma law, anyone who is 15 or older and facing a first-degree murder charge is automatically tried in adult court.
Also Tuesday, 17-year-old Michael Dewayne Jones was charged with being an accessory after the fact and with using a vehicle during the discharge of weapon. Jones is charged as a youthful offender but will still have his case heard in adult court.
No bond was set for the younger boys. Bond was set at $1 million for Jones.
Where? Oklahoma. Buckle on the Bible Belt. The right to kill over any delusion has become ingrained in Conservative American culture.
I don’t think this has anything to do with 2nd Amendment freaks. Being from Georgia, I live right in the middle of all that. There is something else going on here that motivated these kids. Boredom, they said.
When I her about this kind of thing, it chills me to the bone….
Well in passing it has to do with the 2nd in that guns are readily available. But in urban areas what becomes so lethal is the dead end phenomenon. These kids form the culture that life dooms them to prison or worse and then killing becomes a throw away act. I wonder how much failure the boys were marinated in? Bored? Somehow I doubt this had anything to do with starting school a week too late.
Lots of urban, exurban, suburban and rural boys get into a whole lot of vandalism and property destruction just out of “boredom”, not to mention killing jackrabbits, frogs, etc. I never got in with any kids like that, even though the suburb I grew up in was hella boring. But as an adult, I’ve heard all manner of such stories from old friends, casual acquaintances, work colleagues, guys at the gym, etc. But these kids were especially stupid and vicious. Not gonna spend two seconds feeling sorry for any of them. They ain’t got enough going on upstairs to matter, morally, intellectually, spiritually. I’m sure they’ll find life as teenagers in maximum security prison quite the adrenaline rush. Not to mention the endorphin rushes they’ll get after their frequent beat downs.