'I hope they can forgive me': Chris Lane's killer offers emotional apology to victim's family
The teenager who was at the wheel when Australian baseball star Chris Lane was shot dead in a cold blooded, random drive-by shooting has issued a tearful apology to the family of his victim.
Michael Jones was just 17 when he and two friends drove past Mr Lane, 22, jogging on the side of the road in the small Midwest town of Duncan on August 16, 2013.
In a world exclusive interview to air in a major 7 News investigation on Tuesday night, Jones told of the moment the trigger was pulled, and how his friends laughed at the terrifying attack, leaving their victim to die slowly on the side of the road.
Chris Lane was young, fit and madly in love with his girlfriend, living his own version of the American dream through a college baseball scholarship.
He was visiting his girlfriend in Duncan when he left the house to go for a run - as he often did - through the town’s quiet suburban streets.
It was a Friday, and Jones was driving his two friends, Chancey Luna, then 16, and James 'Bug' Edwards, then 15, home from a party where they had been drinking, taking Xanax and smoking meth amphetamine.
Recalling the night, Jones told 7 News he hadn’t slept when he got behind the wheel of his Ford Focus.
With Luna sitting in the back and Edwards in the passenger seat, Jones said his friends started laughing in the moments before the attack.
“I’m just driving down the road and I hear Chancey kind of snickering in the back seat and I hear Bug kind of laughing you know and I asked him what so funny and they told me not to worry about it and just to keep driving,” he told 7 News.
“And we come to a peak of a hill and that’s when I see Chris, Chris jogging and then right before we passed him Chancy shot, shot at him and I heard him scream.”
Reaching out of the window of the car, Chancy fired a handgun at the unsuspecting athlete, hitting him in the back.
Facing the direction of traffic, Mr Lane didn’t even see his killers approaching.
Clutching his back, Mr Lane stumbled across the road towards a row of houses and collapsed in a ditch, fighting to take his last breaths.
Inside the fleeing vehicle, Jones said the killers were “excited”.
“They was.. this may sound crazy.. but they was excited," he said. " They was happy."
“Their exact words was, ‘you got that n****, you shot him, you got him, you got him’.”
Without a second thought of their victim, slowly dying on the side of the road, Jones said his main concern was trying not to get caught.
“The only thing I told Chancey was give me your gun and give me the ammo so I can get rid of it. That’s, that’s just being honest.”
Christopher Lane, the Melbourne man who was two weeks away from celebrating his 23rd birthday, died on the side of the road in the arms of two strangers who were desperately trying to save his life.
Speaking about the incident, Jones said he never thought his victim was going to die.
He offered a tearful apology to Mr Lane’s parents, Peter and Donna, accepting his role in their son’s death and asking them for their forgiveness.
“I know I’ve put you all through through a lot, you know and there’s nothing I can say or do to ever change what happened but I do… I do hope that they can find it, you know, to forgive me.
“I’d tell them that I really am truly sorry and ah, I know they’re never going to see Chris again and that’s something that not only them but I have to live with because they’re not ever going to see Chris again at my hand. You know I may not have pulled the trigger but I drove away and that’s just as bad.”
Before returning back to his cell, where he will spend the next 38 years for his second-degree murder sentence, Jones said he thinks about Mr Lane every single day.
“And I’ll think about it every day for the rest of my life.”
Seven News Investigates – In Cold Blood: The Chris Lane Story on Tuesday at 8.30pm on Seven.
