Nothing but tragedy plumes from details in the murder trial surrounding gay student Larry King and classmate Brandon McInerney. As the murder plot unfolds, the prosecution hones in on McInerney, the teen killer currently facing a sentence of first-degree murder for the execution of his classmate, King.
The case began in 2008, when McInerney shot the gay teen in the back of the head in a first-period classroom, after King allegedly told McInerney “love you, baby!” or “what’s up, baby!” in a school hallway the day prior to the shooting.
Infuriated by the comments, McInerney brought a .22 handgun in his backpack the day after the comments were made, and shot the boy, then 14, point-blank in the head.
“I sat and I thought about it over and over,” he told psychologist Douglas Hoagland months after he shot King, according to the L.A. Times. “It didn’t calm me down. It made me more angry. All I could think about was I wanted to kill him.”
McInerney’s childhood had long been speckled with violence, from physical abuse to family dysfunction – a past the defense will intend to use to its full advantage in a plead for manslaughter.
But regardless of the student’s riddled past, prosecutor Maeve Fox insists the law does not change or become flexible on the basis of sympathy, and the boy must be punished for his detestable crime.
Fox continued to explain to the jury that the case is certainly a “tragedy on all levels,” notwithstanding the fact that McInerney must be convicted and punished for the alleged crime.
In closing arguments, Fox insisted that defense claims of provocations on the basis of flirtations and a “hellish childhood” are but mere “smokescreens” to detract from the real tragedy of the case: King “was executed for who he was” – that is, a gay teen.
The defense will present their case in the following weeks.
