McInerney Prosecutor: Killing Of Larry King Was Premeditated

Three years after then-8th grader Brandon McInerney murdered openly gay student Larry King in front of horrified classmates, a prosecutor in McInerney's just-launched trial says the killing was premeditated and based on the shooter's belief that homosexuality is an abomination. White supremacist materials were found in McInerney's home after the murder.

King was bullied by McInerney and other boys at the school, Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox said in her opening statement in the trial, which is being conducted at a courthouse in Chatsworth. But shortly before his death, King had begun wearing high heels, makeup and earrings to school and had become more confident in himself, she said. “Larry King for the first time in his life wasn’t taking it anymore,” Fox said. “And he started to give people what I prefer to call the proverbial chin. Only it was more profane. The proverbial ‘f ... you.’” The day before King was shot, the two boys had been bickering in a eighth-grade science class, she said. When King got up to get a drink of water, “Brandon said ‘I am going to shoot him.’ And this is what a student will testify to.” The next day McInerney pulled a .22-caliber handgun out of his backpack and shot King in the head, authorities have said.

McInerney's defense team claims that he was the victim of King's aggressive sexual bullying.