Lawrence King was a fifteen-year-old kid that was shot in the head for being gay and not dressing to his supposedly “sex”. He was shot dead in the computer lab in his Junior High, E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, California. (Cathcart, 2008). King was very open about him being gay, like going to weekly meet ups with Ventura County Rainbow Alliance every Friday night (Cathcart, 2008). King classmates said he started to wear makeup and dress in women’s cloths and proclaimed himself gay to the whole school. A group of boys had verbal confrontation the day before of the shooting over how King portrayed himself (Salliant & Covarrubias, 2008). Lawrence King shooting really highlighted some major issues that were happening in the middle school. Some were: issues regarding gays, transgender people, bullying, white supremacy, child abuse and school violence came to the surface. (Gould, 2011) Brandon McInerney shot King in the head two times while he was sitting behind him in the computer lab. He was charged as an adult with premeditated hate crime and gun possession. (Cathcart, 2008) Details about the two boys back rounds and home life made this case even more emotional. King came from a foster home for …show more content…
These experiences do not have to huge blowout situations but could be just small instances where McInerney gets offended. As Ghazi-Tehrani states, “Most theoretical accounts of hate crime assume a necessary psychological cause because leading definitions of hate crime presuppose individual hostility toward the victim 's social group.” (Ghazi-Tehrani, 2016) In this instance, there is extreme individual hostility toward King that was amplified by him getting asked to be his valentine that hit a moral note for him. These psychological reasons are just one aspect of Heck’s functional approach of explaining hate