Chris Lane's alleged murderer faces trial.

The trial for Chancey Luna the teenager accused of the first-degree murder of Australian baseball player Chris Lane has begun.

He had everything to look forward to – a promising career in sport, a future with his girlfriend. A loving family back in Melbourne.

But inexplicable on August 16, 2013 he was shot. A bullet through his back.

Chris Lane, aged just 22 had a baseball scholarship at Oklahoma’s East Central University. He was visiting his girlfriend, Sarah Harper, at her hometown of Duncan, she worked at the local pro shop for the country club and while she worked he decided to go for run, promising her as he left he would return and keep her company for the duration of her shift.

Police say that as he was jogging three teenagers watched him from a dilapidated house.

For unknown reasons they got into a car and followed him.

He was shot with a .22-caliber bullet that penetrated arteries, fractured two ribs and collapsed both lungs.

He was found slumped on the side of a dusty road wearing a Hanes gray T-shirt with cutoff sleeves and the red logo of his college. REDLANDS BASEBALL.

Chancey Luna was 16 when the shooting took place. He is described as being quiet – a boy who lived alone with his single mother who worked supporting disabled adults.

Vanity Fair wrote that Luna used the handle “Baby Drake” on Facebook, a reference to the rapper Drake.

He was tight with one of the other boys in the car, James Edwards who was 15 at the time of Lane’s death, but not as friendly with Michael Jones, then 17.

Police say that the boys admitted, “We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody”.

Last month Edwards, who has become a prosecution witness and is expected to testify at the trial, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to a second-degree murder charge.

The Duncan Banner reported that Michael Jones, 19, admitted to being in a car with co-accused Chancey Luna and James Edwards “with the knowledge a gun was in the car”.

Jones also admitted seeing a shot fired telling a preliminary hearing last year that Michael Jones was driving the car while Luna was in the back seat.

Edwards claimed that the car accelerated and veered near a jogger on the road and to “his surprise a gun was fired” from the back seat.

“Who shot the gun?” assistant district attorney Leah Edwards asked.

“Mr Luna,” Edwards replied.

Edwards then went on to testify that Luna had said “I thought there were supposed to be blanks in the gun.”

Chancey Luna’s lawyers tried to have the trial moved claiming that he will face a hostile jury; they also have tried to have him tried as a minor as he was 16 at the time of the murder.

If found guilty he faces life in prison without the prospect of parole. The trial of James Edwards is scheduled for next month.

These trial are expected to be high profile in the US with even the President commenting on the tragic death of the young baseball player.

“There is an extra measure of evil in an act of violence that cuts a young life short,” he said, adding that his, and the first lady’s, thoughts and prayers were with the Lane family.

The family of Chris Lane are travelling to Duncan for the duration of the trials. There is hope that they will gain some form of closure in what has a been a long a difficult road.

We will keep you updated.