Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...DA: Larry King shot ‘execution Style’
02.11.2009 3:30pm EST
(Oxnard, California) The Ventura County prosecutors office is asking a judge to refuse a defense move to have the Larry King murder case moved to juvenile court – telling the judge that Brandon McInerney planned the killing and shot King “execution style.”
McInerney’s attorney is appealing a ruling last month by Ventura County Superior Court Judge Rebecca Riley rejecting a motion to get files and documents from the district attorney’s office to show how they determined the youth should be tried as an adult.The prosecutor’s office said McInerney has a “racist skinhead philosophy” and that he sat behind the 15-year-old King in class last February 12. Then, without saying anything, he shot King in the back. When King fell to the floor, McInerney got up and fired a “second, coup de grace” shot into the back of King’s head. At the time McInerney was 14.
It was the first time the prosecutor has provided details of the killing. Senior Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox told The Ventura Star newspaper Wednesday that the district attorney decided to provide the details to back up its assertion the case should be handled in adult court.
McInerney, who turned 15 last month, is charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime.
King often dressed in a feminine manner and told friends that he was gay. Twenty horrified students were in the classroom at the time of the shooting.
The teen was rushed to hospital. He died after doctors declared him brain dead and his mother agreed to have life-support removed.
In December, a judge ruled that McInerney is competent to stand trial after hearing from a court appointed psychiatrist and a psychologist.
His attorneys sought to have the youth declared developmentally incapable of standing trial. If McInerney had been found not competent, he would have been sent to a mental health facility where he would be treated and held until he was deemed able to stand trial.
In October, Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox said that white supremacist materials had been found by investigators in McInerney’s bedroom.
If convicted as an adult, McInerney faces a sentence of 51 years to life.
He may be a child in years. He may be a child in mind as well. I know many in their twenties and thirties who are children. Nonetheless when I was being tortured at his age, I never dreamed of something like this. Make an example of him and publicize it to death.
I keep wondering what the reaction in the media and the Gay community would be if the murdered and murderer were reversed.
I have seen many comments from an adult or parent’s point of view but none from someone who is currently feeling the hatred against the LGBT community in schools. I am currently in high school and I remember all throughout middle school being in complete denial of who I was because of the hatred all around me. Slurs against the gay community were popular by then and I remember being terrified to come out because of all that hatred. And I knew all those students were capable of a lot more than just slurs.
Too many people are underestimating the ablity of children to understand things once in middle school. They may be brainwashed one way or another but they still understand. They know what it is to hate and to fight and to need to feel like they are more important than someone else.
If slurs and fights are so easy then why is it so difficult to believe that a child planning a murder and shooting a classmate is not as easy? With all the movies and shows that middle schoolers watch it’s not difficult to imagine at all.
When I heard Brandon was being tried as an adult I felt a sort of grim happiness. He deserves nothing less than life in prison but I so would have prefered no one getting hurt at all. Just the fact that Brandon killed Lawrence ‘execution style’ is enough to prove to me that Brandon had ceased to think as a child. No true child should be thinking of murdering a fellow classmate.
So give him life in prison! Show all others who believe like he does that it’s not okay anymore! Too long has hatred against the LGBT community been allowed and it has to stop here.
This is not a child or an adult, its a defective product than cannot be repaired. It should be unplugged and returned to the manufacturer as defective. Not an “eye for an eye”: just give it back to “Jesus”.
Murder=Murder, Hate=Hate. At age 14, I knew what was right, and what was wrong. Unless McInerny was mentally disabled, he knew what he was doing. Killing a person because you don’t like what they represent, is totally wrong. When he stood over the victim and made sure to blast another hole in his head, does not make him a child. That is EVIL. Do you know how many people, I’ve disagreed with? I didn’t kill them in high school, middle school, or elementary school. Just because this “kid” is 14, doesn’t make any special reasons not to try him as an adult. If you’re old enough to do the crime, and know what you are doing, then you’re old enough to pay for the crime. Life in prison is the nicer way of dealing with this hateful act. He’s very lucky not to have been put on death row. Crime=Crime, it’s time to reap what you sew.
Menstruator,
No excuses like oh, he had bad parents, oh, he ate too many “Hostess Twinkies” and all that sugar damaged his body and mind, oh, he watched too much TV and it warped his moral compass and led him to murder as though he was too well educated by the violence on TV. All this plays a part. But ultimately according to law, Brandon sat behind his classmate in school and pulled the trigger. His parents didn’t pull the trigger and shoot someone unaware of what was about to happen, Brandon did. He did the actual crime and will have to do the time behind bars. While his parents will have to emotionally “do the time” as long as they live.
So much for his parents letting him watch TV as a very young boy but at the same time ask him questions to get him to start eventually thinking critically about what he sees on TV and know that just because it’s on TV (like stealing, killing, violence, terrorism and illegal drugs in movie scenes and on the news) necessarily means it’s real life, or normal, desirable, good or beneficial to himself, his friends, neighbors, his family and the society at large. Just guessing, of course.
I knew one parent who let her child watch whatever on TV, but then would ask him questions to engage his ability to think critically about what he saw. That way, it the mom was in control of her kid and what of was right and wrong and not the TV. Her son learned to not blindly and uncritically accept whatever was on the TV.
Try him as a minor BUT make sure the sentence length is appropriate. Keep him in juvy until 24 (last time I lived in Cali, they had 24 year olds in juvy hall with the 10 and 11 year olds)then transfer him to jail for the remainder of his sentence. Take the death penalty off the table, but life without parole should work.
I agree with you Myke- – -McInerney needs to be punished severely! I am not an advocate of the death penalty either, but do think he should be made to sit and think about his crime. He did an adult crime, so let him pay the adult consequences. This was such a hateful crime, plus he had time to plot this out. He was a coward to shoot this kid in the back. I can’t, however,fully put the blame on his parents. Maybe this crazy learned it elsewhere. Whatever, I hope this isn’t a case of justice being hidden behind the law!!!!!!