Prosecutors filed charges against three teenagers Tuesday after police said the boys randomly targeted an Australian baseball player as he jogged and shot him in the back, killing him, to avoid the boredom of an Oklahoma summer day.
Christopher Lane, 22, of Melbourne, died Friday along a tree-lined road on Duncan’s well-to-do north side. Two teenagers, 15- and 16-year-olds, were charged with first-degree murder and ordered held without bond.
A third, age 17, was accused of being an accessory after the fact and with driving a vehicle while a weapon was discharged. He said in open court “I pulled the trigger,” but the judge directed him to remain quiet and said Tuesday was not the day to discuss the facts of the case.
The boy cried.
His bond was set at $1 million.
Police Chief Dan Ford has said the boys had the simplest of motives — overcoming a boring end to their summer vacation. Ford said in a variety of interviews that the 17-year-old had told officers they were bored and killed Lane for “the fun of it.”
Meanwhile, family and friends on two continents mourned Lane, who gave up his pursuit of an Australian football career to follow his passion for baseball in the U.S. His girlfriend tearfully laid a cross at a streetside memorial in Duncan, while half a world away, an impromptu memorial grew at the home plate Lane protected as a catcher on his youth team.
“We just thought we’d leave it,” his girlfriend, Sarah Harper, said as she visited the memorial. “This is his final spot.”
Flowers, photos and an Australian flag already adorned the roadside in a tribute to the 22-year-old.
“I don’t know anybody who’s left this. It means a lot,” Harper said.
Lane played at East Central University in Ada, 85 miles east of Duncan, and had been visiting Harper and her parents after he and his girlfriend returned to the U.S. from Australia about a week ago. Lane’s former clubs sought ways to honor their former teammate.
His old team, Essendon, scheduled a memorial game for Sunday to raise funds for Lane’s parents as they worked to have their son’s remains sent home. The club said it would deliver notes of condolences sent to its headquarters.
At Essendon Catholic School, Lane will be remembered at a November Mass in which all former students who have died are mourned and celebrated, former school captain David Ireland told The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
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 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. “This is the bitter harvest and legacy of the policies of the NRA that even blocked background checks for people buying guns at gunshows. People should take this into account before going to the United States. 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.”
Tara Harper, Sarah Harper’s cousin, said her family was working with the Lanes on funeral arrangements but that the girlfriend didn’t want to attend court proceedings for the teens.
“She wants nothing to do with them. She doesn’t want to see them. She doesn’t want to hear them,” Tara Harper said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know why it happened. No answer will ever be satisfying, no matter what it is.”
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