The mother of one of the teenagers facing a life prison sentence for the drive-by shooting of Australian baseballer Chris Lane in Oklahoma is outraged prosecutors struck a deal with the youngest accused.
James Edwards Jr, who was 15 when Lane was gunned down last August, had his first-degree murder charge dropped in a Duncan, Oklahoma court on Tuesday.
Edwards Jr will instead be charged with the lesser offence of accessory after the fact.
The alleged shooter Chancey Luna, 17, and the alleged driver of the car Dewayne Jones, 18, face murder trials later in the year and Edwards Jr will be the prosecution's star witness.
"I'm really upset about it," Luna's mother, Jennifer, who said her son says he is innocent, told AAP.
"It's awful.
"I'm sick to my stomach."
Ms Luna said Edwards Jr lived at her home before the shooting, but now he has turned his back on her and Chancey.
"James was calling me from jail and said, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I still love you Mum', because I was like a mum to him," Ms Luna said.
Lane, 22, from Melbourne, had a baseball scholarship at Oklahoma's East Central University and was going for a jog on August 16 when he was shot once in the back with a .22 calibre handgun.
Police said Jones claimed they were "bored" and thought it would be fun to shoot someone.
A few days after Lane's murder Stephens County District Attorney Jason Hicks argued Edwards Jr should not be granted bail because he believed Edwards Jr "was a threat to the community".
The prosecutor told how Edwards Jr danced when he was first brought to the Stephens County Jail and was treating the arrest as a "joke".
It was a different story in the Duncan courtroom on Tuesday.
"Our case is not strong enough to take him to trial," Hicks told Judge Jerry Herberger, the Duncan Banner newspaper reported.
Edwards Jr, a junior wrestling champion nicknamed "Bug", testified for the prosecution at a preliminary hearing for Luna and Jones in February, but instead of bolstering the prosecution's case, Luna's lawyers said it showed Lane's death was not premeditated murder, but manslaughter or second degree murder.
Edwards Jr told the court Jones' Ford Focus swerved just before Luna fired the gun from the back seat out a window and Luna said he thought blanks were in the gun, not bullets.
A gag order prevents prosecutors and lawyers involved in the case from commenting publicly about it.
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