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Gay Eighth Grader Fatally Shot

Many of you know about this awful incident. I've been too sick about it to write up a blog post. But it comes as a stark reminder that we have work to do.

I will copy and paste what Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin wrote:

Lawrence King, a 15-year-old student at at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California was shot at least twice in the head by another classmate last Tuesday. Fellow students say that King was gay and was often taunted by fellow students.

King was rushed to St. John’s Regional Medical Center, where he was initially listed in critical condition. By the end of the day, his condition was reportedly improving. But today we learn that he has been declared brain dead by two neurosurgeons at the hospital on Wednesday at 2 pm. He is being kept on life support so his organs can be harvested for transplant.

Police said the 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot King at the start of the school day and fled the campus. He was arrested by police a few blocks away. Today, prosecutors charged him with premeditated murder, with a special allegation of using a firearm in the commission of a hate crime. Once King is removed from life support, prosecutors have indicated they will try McInerney as an adult.

Lawrence’s father described his son as “headstrong, confident, artistic and sweet“:

Larry King loved to sing songs by folk rock trio Crosby, Stills and Nash, and was studying “The Star-Spangled Banner” in hopes of singing it at his younger brother’s baseball games, his father said. “He had a very gifted singing voice.”

…He also enjoyed using licorice sticks to catch crawdads at Bubbling Springs Park in Port Hueneme, where his family would go for his younger brother’s baseball games.


You can read some of Jim's commentary in his post.

You can also read John Ireland's commentary at Gay.com.

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Comments

Joe Moderate said…
My lunch conversation today with my friends was about school shootings. We just learned that the gunman who wounded many and killed 7 last night at Northern Illinois University was a graduate student at our school. Really disturbing... and he bought some of his

That one student would ever take up a weapon and kill another student--for whatever reason--is absolutely horrible. I can't imagine what the families of the shooters and the victims are going through right now. This is just insanity.
3:32 PM
Anonymous said…
oy oy oy. When will these mindless killings end? A x
5:52 PM
Anonymous said…
hi. I found your blog through my friend ewa, I believe you have met her. her boyfriend's name is pontus and they're friends with noa and alex resare. anyway, to get back to what I was planning to write. I like your blog anyway, and this whole ex-gay thing is... I really don't know if I should laugh or cry. it's pathetic. those people claiming to have been gay... to me it's a mystery they can live with themselves, denying who they are to such an extreme degree. I do not believe homosexuality is something that can be changed, and those "ex-gays" are probably just denying things to such a degree they won't feel it anymore, but then suddenly being attracted to the opposite sex...? hah. right. I'm gay too, and I have a very, very hard time believing anyone could make me stop being attracted to girls.

sorry for ranting, have just been thinking about this and never commented, so, now I have.

/Minea in Umeå.
8:51 PM
Anonymous said…
What bugs me about stories like this is the masses of people who will jump up and down saying there's no such thing as a "hate crime", because all people are equal, and it's wrong to say that the death of, say, this kid is worse than the murder of some het WASP. They just don't get it. When you commit a hate crime, you are committing a crime against an individual in order to send a message to the group to which that person belongs. But, it's like trying to strain soup through a brick--it's just not going to get through.
11:58 AM
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