Prosecutors on
Thursday charged a 14-year-old boy with attempted murder
and said he committed a hate crime in the classroom shooting
of an Oxnard, Calif., eighth-grader who was declared
brain-dead.
Prosecutors would
not say why they filed a hate-crime enhancement with
the attempted murder count, but several classmates said the
15-year-old victim, Lawrence King, sometimes wore
makeup, high heels, and other feminine attire.
Prosecutors want
the suspect tried as an adult and expect to upgrade the
charges after King is taken off a ventilator for organ
donation.
''It is
inevitable that this is going to become a murder case,''
Ventura County prosecutor Maeve Fox said.
King was shot in
the head Tuesday morning during a class at E.O. Green
Junior High in Oxnard, police said. More than 20 other
students were in the room at the time.
Fox said she
could not discuss the facts behind the allegation of a hate
crime because those details of the case have not been
publicly disclosed. Oxnard police have not specified a
motive but said there appeared to be a personal
dispute between the two.
King sometimes
came to school wearing makeup and high heels,
eighth-grader Nicholas Cortez, 14, told the Associated
Press.
Another
eighth-grader, Michael Sweeney, said King's appearance was
''freaking the guys out,'' the Los Angeles
Times reported Thursday.
''He would come
to school in high-heeled boots, makeup, jewelry, and
painted nails -- the whole thing,'' Sweeney told the Times.
King was
pronounced brain-dead at St. John's Regional Medical Center
on Wednesday, said Craig Stevens, senior deputy
medical examiner in Ventura County. Doctors planned to
remove some of his organs for donation Thursday,
Stevens said.
''I think that's
what he would have wanted,'' King's father, Greg King,
told the Ventura County Star.
Lawrence King had
been under the care of the county foster care system
and lived at Casa Pacifica, a nearby center for abused and
neglected children, said Steve Elson, the facility's
chief executive.
''We're are all
stunned, and it's just an unspeakable tragedy,'' Elson
said Wednesday. ''This is a very big traumatic experience
for all of us.'' (AP)
