Lawrence King's Killer Will Stand Trial

Rod 2.0 reported last week while I was in the middle of preparing for finals and not reading the paper that the teenaged killer of gay teen Lawrence King has been ruled competent for trial. 14-year-old Brandon McInerney (pictured here) fatally shot 15-year-old King at point blank range in the head during an 8am class at a middle school in Oxnard in February 2008.

The incident became a cause celebre and there was a controversial Newsweek magazine cover story on Lawrence King which portrayed the murdered boy as "confused" and even called him a bully for wearing make-up and high-heels to class. Clearly, both teens were troubled(Lawrence had been living at home for abused kids and Brandon's parents had multiple run-ins with the police and documented substance abuse problems) but the reason why the case became so famous (and why bloggers like MadProfessah, Joe.my.god and Rod 2.0 arefollowing it so closely) is the visuals of one fourteen-year-old boy shooting another boy in the head because one boy was ashamed that the murdered boy had said he had a crush on the other boy.