Weeks before he
was brazenly killed by his teenage crush, 15-year-old
Lawrence King was encouraged to be himself. Did that lesson
help send him to his grave?
At 8:15 a.m. on
February 12, Brandon McInerney, age 14, stormed into the
computer lab of Oxnard, Calif.’s E.O. Green Junior
High. Armed with a small caliber handgun, he shot
15-year-old Lawrence King twice in the head in front
of a roomful of students.
If they
didn’t see the execution coming, most of
King’s peers at school knew he was being
bullied for being proudly gay and flouting male
conventions by accessorizing his school uniform with eye
shadow and high-heeled boots. In the months leading up
to that morning, King had undergone a metamorphosis.
Guided by a welcoming support system at the group home
where he lived, the teenager was encouraged to dress as he
pleased and live as the person he wanted to be. What King
and others didn’t recognize was that this
encouragement—and his response to
it—placed him on a collision course with a culture
that found him repulsive.
Even before his
death, Larry King was notorious. He was the sassy gay kid
who bragged about his flashy attire and laughed off
bullying, which for him included everything from
name-calling to wet paper towels hurled in his
direction. King was an easy target—he stood 5 foot 4
and was all of 100 pounds.
The boy’s
unconventional family life was also fodder for gossip around
the lockers of E.O. Green. Even though both his parents
reside in Oxnard, about an hour’s drive
northwest of Los Angeles, King lived at Casa Pacifica,
a group home for abused, neglected, and emotionally troubled
children. The facility houses kids until they are returned
to their families or taken in by foster parents. The
average stay at Casa Pacifica, according to staff
member Melissa Flavin, is 30 days. King lived there
for over four months.
Except for a few
short sentences from King’s father to the Los
Angeles Times about their grief, the King
family has refused to speak to the media, including The
Advocate, about Larry’s death or his living
situation. “His dad, his name is Greg King…I
think that’s his foster father who adopted
him,” says David Keith, spokesman for the Oxnard
Police Department. “I don’t know where
[Larry’s] natural parents are or even if
they’re in the picture.”
At a February 22
public memorial service attended by 500 mourners, a
Presbyterian minister eulogized King as one of God’s
“grand creations,” “a
masterpiece” who loved bugs, chess, and licorice. He
told a story about how King and his mother, Dawn,
crocheted hundreds of scarves for U.S. soldiers in
Afghanistan. With a shaky voice, the mayor of Oxnard
shared his anguish over King’s murder and made a plea
for community-wide compassion. No one in the King
family spoke.
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