Australian baseball player in OK killed by 'bored' teens'

CNN has only part of this story. Three teenage boys - 2 black and one white - apparently targeted an Austrialian citizen who was attending a local college in Oklahoma on a baseball scholarship for murder because they were "bored."

Chris Lane was walking down the road when the teens came up behind him and shot him in the back:

A random act of violence has left a promising 23-year-old college baseball player dead, a family devastated and two countries half a world apart rattled.

Christopher Lane, who was from Australia, was gunned down in Duncan, Oklahoma, while he was out jogging last week. The motive? Three teens who had nothing better to do, according to police.

"They witnessed a young man run by on the street. Chose him as the target," Police Chief Danny Ford told CNN affiliate KSWO.

Charges were filed Tuesday against the three teens.

James Edwards Jr., 15, and Chancey Luna, 16, were charged as adults with felony murder in the first degree, according to Kaylee Chandler, Stephens County Court Clerk.

Michael Jones, 17, faces two charges -- use of a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and accessory after the fact to murder in the first degree, she said.

A judge set bond at $1 million for Jones, while no bond was set for Edwards and Luna, Chandler said.

When police arrested the teens, one of them offered up a motive that made clear that Lane, who attended East Central University on a baseball scholarship, was chosen at random.

"He said the motive was, 'We were going to kill somebody,'" Ford told Australian radio station 3AW.

"They decided all three of them were going to kill somebody."

Police say the teens shot Lane in the back in the town of about 24,000 and sped away in their car.

"There were some people that saw him stagger across the road, go to a kneeling position and collapse on the side of the road," Ford told KSWO.

Attempts to revive Lane failed.

Police caught the teens a few hours after the shooting. Thanks to security cameras from local businesses, police saw their car speeding down the street.

There has been much discussion whether the crime was racially motivated, despite the fact that one of the attackers was white.

The teen who apparently fired the fatal shot, James Edwards, posted Facebook material indicating he was an aspiring rapper and immersed in the gangsta culture. The postings make pretty clear that he was looking to establish his bona fides as a gangsta rapper by commiting a crime - hinting at murder at one point. There are also indications that Edwards was a member of the Crips street gang.

Much has been made of the attention paid to this crime as opposed to the scrutiny given the Trayvon Martin case. Sorry, I don't see it. Even if there was a racial element to this crime, the circumstances that surrounded the Martin shooting are miles apart from the gunning down of Chris Lane. This is a tragedy where gangsta culture should be blamed, and not necessarily racial animus.

Comment from Thomas Lifson:

All the racial demagoguery over Trayvon Martin's death is built on a case in which there was no evidence at all of a racial motivation in George Zimmerman's actions. NBC, to its everlasting shame, edited the 911 call to make it appear so, and the hounds were loosed, stoking black resentment and opening a rich vein for the grievance mongers to mine.

I cannot claim to be an expert on gangsta culture, but I have to wonder if the Crips are an equal opportunity employer with a plan to address any racial disparities that might appear in their structure.

I also wonder if there has been an uptick in black-on-white crime in the wake of all the incitement.

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com