The New York Times examines this summer’s fatal shooting of Australian jogger Christopher Lane in Duncan, Ok., by three teenagers, one of whom said they had committed the crime because they were bored and looking for a thrill. Some commentators called it a hate crime, but the Times concludes that “it was not about race,” noting that one of the three suspects is white, another has a white mother, and a third has many white friends, including a girl he had been dating.
“It was not a black-on-white crime,” District Attorney Jason Hicks of Stephens County said.The Times calls the case “a tale about teenagers from broken families, lives complicated by drugs and poverty, who seemed idle, alienated and drawn to a small-town version of urban gang culture.”