Boredom kills.
Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2013 10:52 pm
Three Oklahoma teenagers have been charged in the death of an Australian who was gunned down in broad daylight as he jogged on a road in the US state.
College baseball player Christopher Lane, 22, was shot in the back in the town of Duncan on Friday.
Police said one of the accused admitted Lane was killed for "the fun of it".
Two of the teenagers, aged 15 and 16, were charged with first-degree murder; the third, aged 17, has been named as accessory to the crime.
Lane, from Melbourne, had been visiting his girlfriend's family in Duncan. He was entering his final year at East Central University in the city of Ada, some 85 miles (137km) east of the town.
Duncan Police Chief Danny Ford told local television on Monday that the 17-year-old suspect had said Lane was killed at random.
"They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said, 'there's our target,'" Chief 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.'"
Mr Ford said they followed Lane in a car and shot him once in the back before driving off.
Witnesses rushed to help Lane after seeing him collapse on the road in Duncan, which has about 24,000 residents.
Police say they have not yet found a murder weapon, the Duncan Banner newspaper reports.
The victim's father, Peter Lane, said 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 told Australia's Sky News.
