Lawrence King's Killer Made Numerous Death Threats

UPDATED: My fellow Blogger Summit attendee, Waymon Hudson, has a thoughtful post on this sad anniversary at Bilerico Project that I recommend.

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New revelations are emerging in court filings in the murder trial of Brandon McInerney who gunned down Lawrence "Larry" King a year ago. While efforts have been made to depict McInerney as the victim of King's unwanted attention, the evidence filed by the prosecution suggests otherwise. Most homophobes are bullies and seem to seek out and/or target their victims - that was my experience as a sometime target - and it looks like McInerney may have been the one who harassed King who fought back with verbal retorts. Personally, I also suspect that the constant anti-gay drumbeat put out by the Christianist/Mormons and the GOP only add to an atmosphere where homophobes feel free to engage in violence against LGBT citizens. Here are some highlights from the Los Angeles Times:

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Lawrence "Larry" King wasn't sexually harassing fellow eighth-grade student Brandon McInerney in the weeks leading up to King's shooting death, prosecutors contend in court documents. McInerney was the aggressor, teasing the effeminate King for weeks and vowing to "get a gun and shoot" him, according to a prosecution brief. Multiple students provided accounts of a growing hostility between the two boys, the document shows.

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"In the days before the shooting, the defendant tried to enlist others to administer a beating to Larry," Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox wrote in a "statement of facts" filed with the brief. "When that failed for lack of interest, he decided to kill Larry."Prosecutors said they provided their most detailed account to date of the events leading to the classroom killing to counter the defense's argument that murder charges against McInerney, then 14, were improperly filed in adult court.

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In her statement of facts, Fox contends that King and McInerney had an acrimonious relationship for months prior to the shooting. They sparred with "typical 8th grade, back-and-forth insults; some sexual, some not," she wrote.Witnesses said King was usually not the aggressor. But after months of teasing by McInerney and other male students who called him "faggot," he had began to retort, according to prosecutors.

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The day before the shooting, the two boys were bickering during seventh period. When King left, a student witness said that McInerney commented, "I'm going to shoot him."Just after that class, another student heard King say "I love you" to McInerney as they passed in a hallway. The same student then heard McInerney say he was "going to get a gun and shoot" King, according to prosecutors. A few minutes later, prosecutors allege, McInerney told one of King's friends: "Say goodbye to your friend Larry because you're never going to see him again."

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The prosecution brief also reveals for the first time that McInerney was familiar with firearms, and that he had used that particular weapon in the past during target shooting with his family.Investigators found a training video in his possession titled "Shooting in Realistic Environments," as well as skinhead and neo-Nazi books and similar writings from the Internet, prosecutors wrote.