He wore high heels and makeup to school.
Some say that’s what got him killed. This innocent, kind-hearted, 15 year-old boy wore high heels and makeup to school, and somehow that meant he was asking to be shot in the back of the head, in a junior high school, by a 14 year-old classmate? He is dead because he wore high heels and makeup to school?
In 2008, Brandon McInerney shot Larry King during class. King died in the hospital two days later on Feb. 14.
McInerney, the “budding white supremacist,” brought the gun to school according to forensic psychologist and blogger Karen Franklin.
Both King and McInerney were eighth-graders at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, CA – a little over 40 miles from Santa Barbara.
At the time, King was living in a group home called Casa Pacifica. He had been openly gay since fourth grade, and was continuously bullied throughout grade school.
At E.O. Green Junior High, King began wearing women’s clothes to school.
Much of the administration opposed this behavior, but under California Law, they were unable to stop him.
Teachers were asked by the principal, Sue Parsons, to make sure that other students were “being civil and non-judgemental.”
“They don’t have to like it but they need to give him his space,” wrote Parsons in a e-mail to the faculty and staff of E.O. Green that was released to the public during the trial.
Allegedly, King approached McInerney on the school’s basketball court a few days before the shooting, asking to be his Valentine.
According to witnesses, McInerney was visibly upset, even asking his friends to assault King on the school property that day.
A member of the administration broke up the ensuing fight.
A day before the shooting, McInerney approached one of King’s friends and said: “Say goodbye to your friend Larry because you’re never going to see him again.”
The next morning McInerneny walked into the computer lab and, after waiting for 20 minutes, pulled out a .22 caliber handgun.
Brandon McInerney walked out, Larry King did not. Two days later, King died from the two gunshot wound to the back of the head.
McInerney was apprehended soon after the shooting, and was put on trial in 2011.
“The 2008 murder polarized the community of Oxnard. The chasm widened during the highly publicized trial three years later, when a pair of private defense attorneys managed to turn the homicide into a reverse civil rights case for beleaguered heterosexuals and white people,” said Dr. Franklin on her blog, “In the News: Forensic Psychology, Criminology, and Psychology-Law.”
In December 2011, McInerney was sentenced to 21 years in prison, for second-degree murder, manslaughter and use of a firearm.
Even after finding evidence of McInerney’s ties to a local white supremacist group, the jury refused to charge him of a hate crime.
The prosecution was stunned.
“Prosecutors said the shooting in front of stunned classmates was first-degree murder and that McInerney should be punished as an adult.
They argued the shooting was a hate crime, an aspect jurors rejected, after authorities found white supremacist materials in McInerney’s home,” reported on the CBS News Crimesider site.
The defense was somehow able to convince over half of the jury of McInerney’s innocence under the idea that King had provoked his attacker by coming on to McInerney.
After the trial, Karen McElhaney, a member of the jury, spoke to the public.
“It was the high heels, the makeup, the behavior,” McElhaney said.
“He was solving a problem,” said another juror, who was among a group of women who wore “Justice for Brandon” bracelets.
King, a transgendered middle-school student, deserved to die for expressing himself–at least according to the jurors.
Five years after the shooting and two years after McInerney’s trial, a documentary called
“Valentine Road” (2013) was released. Directed by Marta Cunningham, “Valentine Road,” (named for the place where Larry King is buried) illustrated King’s story, and the people who loved him most.
I am ashamed to live in a world where intolerance is condoned.
My heart goes out to Larry King’s friends and family, because they must watch as the justice system fails someone they love.
Moreover, I feel sorry for the members of the jury.
Are these men and women so narrow-minded, that they can not comprehend the level of injustice? Or, are they just afraid, willing to avert their eyes because it is easier to ignore a hate crime than it is to confront it?