Last Friday afternoon, Christopher Lane, a college athlete out for a jog, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting, shot in the back and left for dead in an upper middle class area of Duncan, Oklahoma. Police have since arrested three juveniles, aged 15, 16, and 17, in connection with Lane's death.
The story of the murder of the East Central University baseball player has captured international headlines. The victim is an Australian national who was attending ECU on a baseball scholarship. Friends say he had returned to Oklahoma after a visit with family in Melbourne only three days before his murder. The age of his assailants is shocking, but perhaps not as shocking as their reason for killing. According to Duncan police, they simply decided to kill someone. Lane was chosen at random.
Duncan police chief Danny Ford said Lane was,"victim of opportunity. I’m sorry to say that. Somebody would have died that day, somebody mowing their yard--these boys had made up their mind."
Police and witnesses say that Lane was out for a jog in an affluent area of Duncan near the intersection of Country Club Road and Twilight Beach Road when he was shot shortly before 3:00 p.m. Witnesses reported hearing a gunshot, seeing Lane stagger across the road, and hearing tires squeal away from the scene. One bystander rushed to perform CPR while another called 9-1-1. Despite the swift medical attention and rapid response of police, Lane died of his injuries a short time later at Duncan Regional Hospital.
Witnesses described seeing a black car with a white sticker fleeing the scene, and based upon the route the suspects took to escape, police believed the assailants to be local. They got their break a short time later when a parent called police to say that several teenagers were coming over to kill his son. When police arrived, they found the three suspects sitting in a car matching the description of the vehicle that fled the scene of Lane's murder.
The 16-year-old suspect confessed to pulling the trigger and ending Lane's life, saying he "just wanted to kill someone." Police Chief Ford said that the teens had posted messages on their Facebook walls indicating their violent plans. He said, "I think they were on a killing spree. We would have had more bodies that night if we didn't get them."
Although some media reports indicate that the three teens, who are charged with first degree murder, face the death penalty, federal law prohibits capital punishment of juveniles who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed. However, in Oklahoma, juveniles aged 15, 16, and 17 who are charged with murder and other specified violent crimes and sex offenses are prosecuted as adults.
