The random killing of Australian baseball player Christopher Lane has sparked backlash from both the national and international community, as a local high school received anonymous threats, and the Australian Prime Minister has called for a tourism boycott of the United States.
"People thinking of going to the USA for business or tourists trips should think carefully about it, given the statistical fact you are 15 times more likely to be shot dead in the USA than in Australia per capita per million people," Fischer said on CNN, Tuesday night. "It is another example of murder mayhem on Main Street."
Melbourne native Christopher Lane was gunned down in Duncan, Okla. while on a jog. Three teenagers-15-year-old James Francis Edwards Jr., 16-year-old Chance Allen Luna and Michael Dewayne Jones, 17-followed and shot Lane because they were "bored."
Edwards and Luna have been charged with murder, while Jones faces charges of being an accessory to murder and firing a weapon. All three have been charged as adults, NBC News reported.
Outrage and emotionally charged response to the murder led an unknown citizen to send an anonymous threat to Duncan High School, where two of the convicted killers attended school.
"The credibility of the person or persons communicating the threat is very difficult to ascertain," Dr. Sherry Labyer, Superintendent of Schools, wrote in a letter to parents Tuesday night. "However, we want to be proactive in taking reasonable precautions."
She announced that police and security guards would keep watch at schools in the district, and that students will only be allowed to leave campus when a parent checks them out.
The three teenage boys were apparently turned in by someone they were thinking of killing next, according to Australian newspaper the Herald Sun.
52-year-old James Johnson said he called police once he saw the three teenagers hiding in the Immanuel Baptist Church parking lot two hours after they allegedly killed Lane.
"My son called me and said, 'They're saying they're coming to kill me' So I called the police and they got here within about three minutes," Johnson said, also noting that Edwards Jr. had threatened to kill Johnson's son on Facebook.
Lane, who attended East Central University on a baseball scholarship, was well-loved by those that knew him. Since the murder, his friends have set up a project on gofundme.com to help the family pay for flying his remains back to Melbourne.
