Australian baseball player shot dead by “bored” teenagers in Oklahoma

One of the three Oklahoma teenagers accused of gunning down Australian baseball player Christopher Lane as he jogged down the street told police they pulled the trigger because they were "bored," police said.

Lane, 22, was fatally injured in the random shooting on Friday in the Oklahoma town of Duncan.

"They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said: 'There’s our target,'" the chief, Danny Ford, told the Associated Press.

"The boy who has talked to us said, 'We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.'"

James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, and Chancey Allen Luna, 16, were charged with first-degree murder Tuesday afternoon.

A third teenager, Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact and with firing a weapon. 

The 17-year-old reportedly gave a detailed account of the shooting to police.

He told police they targeted Lane at random, following him in a car and shooting him in the back before driving off.

Originally from Australia, Lane was a student and rising baseball star at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.

Lane’s father, Peter, told NBC affiliate KFOR that the killing was "heartless, and to try to understand it is a short way to insanity."

"The fact that something that shouldn’t have happened has happened — it’s the fact that somebody we all love so much is not going to come home," he said in a video from Australia.

Jennifer Luna, the mother of the teen suspected of firing the fatal shot, addressed Lane's parents in a tearful interview.

"I wouldn’t want to be in that position that they’re in right now," she said. "I'm always on my kids. I always tell them: If I lost y’all, I wouldn’t be able to live."

If her son was involved in the shooting, Luna said, he should be punished.

Former Australian deputy prime minister Tim Fischer used the opportunity to highlight the difference in gun laws between the US and Australia's 1996 law that placed tight restrictions on gun ownership.

"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," said Fischer.

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

He said that a boycott by Australian tourists would pressure the US Congress to tighten restrictions on gun use.

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