Utterly Senseless!

I am a news junkie - and I love watching news, but this story makes me sick.  When will Congress ever say enough is enough!?  So sad, so utterly senseless.  The following is from NBCNews.com website.

A woman who called 911 after an Oklahoma baseball player was shot dead jogging down the street told the dispatcher that he fell into a ditch, had blood on his back, turned blue and then stopped breathing.  In a chilling seven-minute recording released Wednesday by prosecutors, the 911 caller, who identifies herself as Joyce Smith, resists panic while pleading for help. She reports to the dispatcher that she does not know the gunshot victim.

“He was standing in the roadway and he fell over, and as I come by, he just fell over in the ditch,” the woman says.  Later she reports: “He’s turning blue.”

The ballplayer, Christopher Lane, was a native of Australia but was a catcher for an Oklahoma college baseball team. He was gunned down Friday in the town of Duncan in an apparently random shooting.  One of three teens charged in the attack told police that they shot Lane because they “were bored” and decided to kill somebody.

The teens were charged Tuesday: James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, and Chancey Allen Luna, 16, were charged with first-degree murder. Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact and with firing a weapon. All were charged as adults, according to the Stephens County District Attorney’s Office.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, anonymous threats against a local high school where two of the suspects where students led the school to step up security.  “The credibility of the person or persons communicating the threats is very difficult to ascertain. However, we want to be proactive in taking reasonable precautions,” Dr. Sherry Labyer, the town’s Superintendent of Schools, wrote in a letter to parents.

As result, she said that with help from the police, security would be beefed up in schools across town and that students would only be allowed to leave once a parent checked them out. They would also not be allowed to have lunch off campus, as they normally are.

The shooting has dominated news reports in Australia and led Australian deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer to call on Australian tourists to boycott the United States.  “It is another example of murder mayhem on Main Street,” Fischer told CNN on Tuesday night.

“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,” Fishcher said.