A 15-year-old
California boy who police say was shot at his junior high
school has been taken off life support and his organs have
been given away. Authorities say Lawrence King was
targeted this week by a younger boy because he came to
school in Oxnard dressed like a woman.
Prosecutors have
charged 14-year-old Brandon David McInerney with
premeditated murder and want him tried as an adult.
McInerney has been jailed on $770,000 bail. A
medical examiner plans an autopsy Friday.
''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,'' the boy'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)
