Michael Jones, the driver of the vehicle carrying the two other teenagers one of whom shot Australian baseball player Christopher Lan last week in Duncan, Okla., has been connected to other crimes in the area, according to one of the detectives on the case. The Daily Mail reports that the Ford Focus of 17-year-old Jones was repeatedly seen in connection to three separate robberies in March of this year.
Detective John Byers said that Jones’s “name kept coming up” as investigators compiled information on the robberies. ”Whenever we executed a search warrant on a house where the armed robbers lived, he showed up when we were at the front door,” he explained, adding that on one occasion Jones appeared, with his pregnant girlfriend, in a parking lot “real close” to the house.
Jones has already admitted to driving the vehicle and that suspects James Edwards, 15, and Chancey Luna, 16, were in the car with him. He would not who reveal which of the two shot Lane, “because if he did he would get killed,” according to the police report. Jones said that another individual was in possession of the gun and that police would never find it.
Jones faces charges of accessory to first-degree murder and of using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon.