Brandon McInerney is expected to receive 21 years in prison at his court sentence Monday for murdering a gay classmate during a computer class in 2008.
McInerney, 17, agreed to a plea deal with Ventura County prosecutors last month, ensuring that McInerney would not seek a retrial after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and one count of voluntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm.
McInerney was only 14 when he murdered 15-year-old Larry King, an openly gay student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, Calif. After a mistrial in September delayed the case even further, prosecutors reorganized their case in the second trial, dropping allegations that McInerney was an anti-gay white supremacist.
McInerney claimed he was pushed to murder King after the gay teen advanced toward him with various gestures and comments, eventually leading McInerney to shoot the teen in a computer lab, his lawyers said. He was found guilty of second-degree murder after the second trial came to a close in November.
Ventura County Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Frawley said prosecutors agreed to the plea deal after uncertainty arising from a second trial according to the Washington Post.
If sentenced the expected 21 years in prison, McInerney will be released just before his 39th birthday.
UPDATE: Brandon McInerney received a prison sentence of 21 years Monday. He did not speak at the sentencing, although attorney Scott Wippert said, “He feels deeply remorseful and stated repeatedly if he could go back and take back what he did he would do it in a heartbeat,” on the teen’s behalf.
King’s father told McInerney, “You took upon yourself to be a bully and to hate a smaller kid, wanting to be the big man on campus,”‘ King’s father, Greg King, said on behalf of his wife. “You have left a big hole in my heart where Larry was and it can never be filled.”
Where were Mr. McInerney’s parents during all of this. I haven’t found one article on the web with anything about them. A 14 year old does not formulate the degree of homophobic hatred necessary to carry out a murder without being carefully and methodically taught. I certainly hope that the McInerney’s do not have any other children, and that if they do, the division of child protective services in Ventura County look into taking these children into protective custody. This is shameful.