Oxnard teen shot on campus removed from life support
The boy is to undergo an autopsy today. His alleged assailant, another student, has been charged with murder.
A 15-year-old boy shot on an Oxnard campus earlier his week has been removed from life support and will undergo an autopsy today, authorities said.
Lawrence King was declared brain dead on Wednesday, a day after he was shot at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard. His family asked that his body remain on a ventilator until his organs could be donated, and that has taken place, said Craig Stevens, Ventura County's senior deputy medical examiner.
Brandon McInerney, 14, has been charged with first-degree murder in King's death, with a special allegation that the killing was a hate crime. He is being held in Ventura County Juvenile Hall pending an arraignment on March 21.
Bail has been set at $770,000.
Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox declined to discuss a motive in the shooting or why prosecutors added the hate crime allegation against McInerney, who was charged as an adult.
But classmates of King said he had recently started to wear makeup and jewelry and had proclaimed himself gay. Several students said King and a group of boys, including the defendant, had a verbal confrontation concerning King's sexual orientation a day before the killing.
McInerney's arraignment was delayed Thursday to give his attorney time to review the police investigation before entering a plea.
If convicted, McInerney could face 50 years to life in prison. The hate crime enhancement would add another one to three years to his sentence.
"In Ventura County, we've never had a violent shooting like this," Fox said. "It's very tragic."
The defendant's family declined to talk to reporters, rushing out of the courthouse after a short hearing. But his attorney, Brian Vogel, said McInerney and the boy's family also were hurting.
"Both Brandon and the family are terribly sad to learn [King] is brain dead," he said.
Vogel declined to discuss the case but said he would ask the court to move it back into the juvenile system. McInerney has no criminal history and is generally a good student at E.O. Green, where he is an eighth-grader.
Vogel said the boy turned 14, the legal cutoff for charging an adolescent as an adult, on Jan. 24. Voters gave prosecutors the option of charging teenage suspects as adults under 2002's Proposition 21.
Details on the backgrounds of both boys began to emerge Thursday. King was a foster child living at Casa Pacifica, a shelter for abused and troubled children in Camarillo.
