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Lane's US trial takes its toll on parents

The parents of slain Australian baseballer Chris Lane have heard how strangers tried to revive their son and, when he died, tried to close his eyes.

Australian baseballer Chris Lane
Australian baseballer Chris Lane (AAP) Source: Facebook

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When family, friends and loved ones talk about slain Australian baseball player Chris Lane they describe his magnetic personality, desire to help others and drive to be a good man.

They also talk about his smile and big, brown eyes.

On Wednesday, in the second-floor District Court in the Stephens County courthouse, Lane's mother Donna and father Peter sat through horrors no parents should have to experience.

It was the second day of testimony in the first-degree murder trial of Chancey Luna who on August 16, 2013, aged just 16, pointed a .22 calibre revolver at Lane as the Australian innocently jogged down a street in Duncan, Oklahoma.

Luna's lawyer Jim Berry has admitted in court the teenager, now 17, pulled the trigger that fired the fatal bullet.

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The question for the seven-man, five-woman jury appears to be was Luna's act premeditated or, as Berry suggested, a boy recklessly attempting to scare a jogger.

Throughout the day the Lanes sat in the front row of the courtroom's public gallery.

The couple from Melbourne listened to a harrowing seven-minute 911 emergency call by frantic motorist Joy Smith who pleaded for paramedics to help 22-year-old Lane as he gasped for breath face-first in a ditch on the side of the road.

The parents listened to two other Duncan locals, Linda Prior and Richard Rhoades, who testified how they also saw Lane on the ground, quickly realised the young stranger was dying before their eyes and tried to resuscitate him.

The Lanes saw photos of their son's body in a hospital morgue featuring a small red bullet hole in his back.

They also saw their son's final moments in a grainy surveillance video from a local school as he jogged up Country Club Road and, not far behind, the black Ford Focus authorities allege Luna was riding in with two teenage mates.

The Lanes, along with their son's girlfriend Sarah Harper, often cried.

Luna sat without emotion just a few metres away.

In a day of horrors, what appeared to have the biggest impact on the Lanes and Harper was when Prior, through her own tears, described her simple act of decency.

It had to do with Lane's brown eyes.

After what Rhoades estimated was nine minutes of trying to keep Lane alive with CPR and pleas of "stay with me buddy", the Essendon Baseball Club catcher with a scholarship to play at Oklahoma's East Central University was dead.

Lane's eyes remained open.

"The big brown eyes were just staring at me," a weeping Prior said.

"I tried to close his eyes but couldn't.

"I just thought it would be nice to close his eyes."

Loud sobs filled the courtroom.

The trial continues on Thursday.


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