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Loading ...King murder hearing delayed by death of defendant’s dad
03.19.2009 11:51am EDT
(Oxnard, California) The preliminary hearing for Brandon McInerney, the 15-year old accused of killing gay classmate Lawrence King, has been put on hold following the sudden death of McInerney’s father.
The preliminary hearing, to determine if there was enough evidence to bind the teen over for trial, was to have begun Wednesday.The body of Bill McInerney, 45, was found in the living room of his home by a friend who was to drive him to the courthouse.
An autopsy found McInerney died of blunt force trauma to the head. Police said there was no evidence of foul play. It is believed that McInerney fell and struck his head on the concrete floor.
Brandon McInerney was informed of his father’s death shortly before he was to have entered the courtroom. Ventura County Superior Court Judge James Cloninger adjourned the hearing.
The elder McInerney has had his own brushes with the law. Court documents obtained by The Associated Press show that in 1993 he shot his wife with a .45-caliber pistol, shattering her elbow. The shooting occurred several months before Brandon was born. He was sentenced in 2000 for domestic battery.
Brandon McInerney, who turned 15 last month, is charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime.
His attorneys are fighting to have the case heard in juvenile court. The issue is currently before the California Supreme Court. If convicted as an adult McInerney could be sentenced to 51 years to life. If he were convicted in juvenile court the sentence would be much shorter.
Earlier this week, Judge Cloninger refused to delay the preliminary hearing until the high court rules.
Cloninger noted that since the hearing would not determine guilt or innocence, there was need to delay the proceedings. He ordered both sides in the case to be on 24-hour call and fully prepared with the hearing to begin as soon as a courtroom is available.
King, 15, often dressed in a feminine manner and told friends that he was gay. He was shot in the head during a morning class at E.O. Green Junior High in Oxnard in February 2008. More than 20 other students were in the room at the time. McInerney was arrested shortly after the shooting.
How odd to think that Lawrence King died of a shot to the head and his killer’s father has presumably died from a blow to the head himself.
So, the kid was locked up when this happened? With all the rage in that family, are we sure someone didn’t bash his head against the floor? Hateful people tend to spawn hateful people.
Brandon is also a victim, of which being on trial as an adult fails to recognize that he is essentially a child that is the cumulative effect of his upbringing and teachings… whether his parents, teachers, church, or piers, has Brandon failed the system, or did the sytem fail the father, that failed Brandon, that failed Larry King?
This article speaks loudly as to what happens when the example we set, and teach our children, serves as choices made for an innocent child that doesn’t know any better than what they are taught. These choices are made for these children, by supposed experienced adults, that ultimately lead these children into disasterous consequences that they will face as an adolescent, and finally as an adult.
All of us are the sum of our teachers and mentors, and yes, Brandon made the wrong choice, but I just can’t seem to shake wondering what he had to suffer with, or what in that suffering created his tragic choice that ended the life of Larry King.
I think many of us stand as witness to having experienced many difficulties, whether growing up, or as an adult, but despite the fact that WE didn’t make the same choice as Brandon, does not mean we can’t understand how broken he had to be to commit such an action against Larry King.
My glass house was shattered decades ago, and my rose colored glasses have become the spectacles of experience that removes the blur and fog, clarifying and exposing the shame, guilt, and fear I felt at this age, of which was supported by my church, which was supported by my parents and all other teacher/mentors in my life at the same age.
Sadly, I suspect the victimization of Brandon will never become much of a topic, which makes the tragedy of Larry King even more tragic… locking Brandon up, and throwing the key away, does NOTHING to address the ’cause’ that created the event. Until we stop the victimization of all the Brandon’s of the world, we will just keep seeing more violence, and more and more jails filled with people that are just as victimized as their victims.
The “victimization of Brandon”? Gag me with a spoon.
I do not have much to say.
R.I.P King!!
On another note however, payback isz a b****! And wat goes around comes around, wat goes up, must come down!
I was hoping the older McInerney had been assaulted with a baseball bat.
The kid is history. He’s going to an institution (prison) where homosex is rampant. What fabulous justice!
Brandon isn’t a victim yet. Wait until his chicken butt gets to prison. Now that’s victimization! Fabulous Justin, just fabulous!
i do have to say that brandon’s justice began when his father died of a head trauma but it is far from over when he goes to jail. they are goin to fry him dry in his rearend. who knows mayb e he will become gay by the time he reaches 20.
@Justin:
“serves as choices made for an innocent child that doesn’t know any better than what they are taught..”
I might agree with you if this kid was like, 9. But this “kid” is a teenager. Not even a particularly young teen, either: 15, which in some areas is actually the age of sexual consent or old enough to get a driving learner’s permit!
Do we know that the brain’s ability to make rational decisions and suppress impulses is not quite fully developed until one’s 20s? Yes.
But does “being slightly impulsive” alone excuse the obviously premeditated act of going to school with a gun; walking into a classroom with that gun loaded and with the safety off; and then shooting a person in the head?
I would say no. No it does not.
If they’d just been in a spur of the moment scuffle that resulted in an accidental death, I might be a little more unsure, might think, “well, maybe he should be tried as a juvenile, yeah”. But this was premeditated MURDER, flat out. And 15 is plenty old enough to know what he was doing when it comes to – I’ll say it again – bringing a loaded gun to school, to a specific classroom, with the obvious plan of shooting a living human being in the head.
15 is old enough to know what a loaded gun will do when fired at a human being; 15 is old enough to know that head shots at close range are deadly pretty much 100% of the time; 15 is old enough to have heard of Columbine and to know that people don’t want guns in their schools; worse yet, 15? Is old enough to know, “if I shoot this person, who has family, who might even have friends, in the head, they will almost certainly die”. 15 is plenty old enough to know what he was doing, and on top of that, the arrogant little prick decided it was no problem at all to do it in front of 20 probably-psychologically-scarred-now witnesses.
In other words: Are you effing kidding me??
This kid isn’t a victim; he’s a psychopath. Half the reason we have long jail sentences for this crap is to keep the psychos from hurting other people for a period of time.
I say “let him get 51 years if convicted”. He’s old enough to have known better; he just didn’t care.