This is 14-year-old Brian McInerney of Oxnard, California. On Tuesday he walked into a classroom and shot and killed 15-year-old Lawrence King, a flamboyant young man who recently had announced that he was Gay. Brian is going to be charged with premeditated murder with a hate-crime enhancement, and will be tried as an adult due to recent changes in California law which allow someone over the age of 14 to be tried as adults.
This breaks my heart.
We have failed as a society when children have access to guns and have no sense of self-restraint. Brian's parents failed him miserably by not being involved enough in his life to have civilized him. This child has not been taught right from wrong. I hae two compelling questions: Where did he get the gun, and where did he learn to hate Gays?
Why are you so certain this happened because the boy said he was gay? Seems to me you have an unstable boy who took the life of an innocent victim. He should be punished to the full extent of the law. But why must everything be about race, gender, sexual preference...do we really know what goes through the mind of someone capable of such a henous crime. If we do then maybe we are not as stable as we think we are.
Posted by: anonymous | February 20, 2008 at 05:16 PM
None are so blind as they who refuse to see.
Posted by: Houston | February 20, 2008 at 07:08 PM
Well, anonymous - possibly because the harassment and taunting began just after the victim proclaimed himself gay.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But the Pope IS Catholic and bears DO shit in the woods, you know.
Posted by: andante | February 29, 2008 at 04:38 AM
From the 2/15/2008 LA Times, news of the killing: "Several students said King and a group of boys, including the defendant, had a verbal confrontation concerning King's sexual orientation a day before the killing."
Posted by: Anonymous | March 02, 2008 at 03:38 PM
You know the answer to both of those questions, and isn't it just so, so sad?
Posted by: Brenda | March 19, 2008 at 12:55 PM
The first poster has a point in asking why everything has to be about discrimination. It shouldn't be a hate crime if a white guy happens to kill a black guy, if a muslim happens to kill a jew, if a straight guy happens to kill a gay guy.
But when it's hate, it is hate, and that's when it does have to be about discrimination.
This kid wouldn't be charged with a hate crime without evidence that this was the motive. Courts don't do that; lawyers aren't stupid enough to argue that something's a hate crime because they feel like it.
The worst part? If convicted, this kid will spend years in prison, maybe life. And he may never understand what he did wrong. He may always blame Lawrence King for ruining his life.
But there comes a point where you have to take responsibility for your actions, and under the law, he's reached that point.
What's so sad is that he didn't do it himself. He didn't start hating by choice; we're not born with an innate sense of hatred inside of us. The likelihood that he picked up this hate on his own is pretty small. More likely his parents taught him to hate, and most definitely his society did.
The only thing we can do to prevent more Brian McInerneys? Teach tolerance. Teach love and not hate. If we have children, teach them to respect everyone, even those who don't.
Until the world becomes tolerant, kids like Brian and Lawrence will continue to become casualties of hate.
Posted by: Anna | June 18, 2008 at 05:28 PM
Thus say we all, amen.
I hope by the time this case comes to trial, the District Attorney will have come to his senses and treats this as the tragedy that it is.
I have different feelings about whether or not adding "hate" to enhance a charge against a criminal accomplishes anything. Why do you think it is less of a hate crime when a young sociopathic homophobe murders an openly Gay child his own age than when White men in White sheets lynch a Black man?
Our society showed its collective revulsion to that kind of hate by passing anti-lynching laws, by outlawing wearing hooded sheets, and declaring racial hatred to be antithecal to American values.
I would protect Matthew Shepherd and Lawrence King with no less fervor than I would James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas.
Thanks for stopping by, Anna, and thanks for your very thoughtful comment.
Posted by: Houston Bridges | June 18, 2008 at 09:34 PM
The killers name was Brandon McInerney wasn't it??? You put Brian, either way this guy IDK if they settled this yet but he should be trialed to the full extent, dare I even say an eye for an eye and give him the needle???
Posted by: Matt M. | July 24, 2009 at 05:08 PM