Prosecutor maintains McInerney told his psychologist he was angry at King

Trial background

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CHATSWORTH — When prosecutor Maeve Fox cross-examined the psychologist who evaluated Brandon Mc­Inerney, she didn’t use her words to frame her argument — she used Mc­Inerney’s.

The Ventura County senior deputy district attorney read from lengthy portions of Douglas Hoag­land’s interviews with Mc­Inerney in which Mc­Inerney spoke about getting the gun to kill Larry King, his homophobia and the burning anger he felt leading up to the 2008 shooting.

“I was really mad,” Mc­Inerney said, according to Hoag­land’s notes that Fox read on Monday. “I wanted to hurt someone. I thought about it over and over, and it didn’t calm me down. All I could think about was that I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to kill him.”

Mc­Inerney, now 17, was 14 when he fatally shot King, 15, in an Oxnard classroom in 2008.

The day before the shooting, Mc­Inerney was so angry that King — who was wearing makeup and telling friends he was gay — said something like, “What’s up, baby,” which sent Mc­Inerney into such a fit of rage that he could only think of harming King afterward, according to the notes. He had never been so disrespected or disgusted in his life, he said, according to the notes.

He went home and tiptoed around his dad so he could get one of the guns that were easily available in his house, Fox read. He said he didn’t talk to his father about it because his father would try to talk him out if it, according to the notes.

Mc­Inerney said he almost left the gun at his house the next morning, but ran back into the house to get it, Fox read. He said he wasn’t even sure he was going to do it that morning, she read. But as he was sitting behind King, someone asked King if he was going to change his name to Leticia, and Mc­Inerney shot him, according to the notes read in court.

Hoag­land also said his initial interviews with Mc­Inerney showed that Mc­Inerney and King never had any interactions until the day before the shooting. Mc­Inerney said he would call King derogatory names for being gay. Mc­Inerney told Hoag­land he was sent to the principal’s office in seventh grade for saying during a sex ed class he “would kill any man who touched him,” according to the notes.

Mc­Inerney denied King ever asked him to be his valentine on the basketball court, as was reported in Newsweek. But Hoag­land said he interviewed Mc­Inerney on Sunday and got more detailed information about the events leading up to the shooting.

Fox asked him to keep his answers limited to what Mc­Inerney told him before the trial, now in its seventh week.

Hoag­land said Mc­Inerney was extremely “emotionally aroused” by the anger he was feeling toward King, an intensity that eventually pushed him into a dissociative state in which he was not completely aware of his actions and their consequences.

He said one example of Mc­Inerney being in such a state was that he didn’t remember dropping the gun after the shooting. But Fox pointed out Mc­Inerney told police when he was arrested that he left the gun at the school.

She also questioned Mc­Inerney’s lack of empathy, throwing out potential diagnoses from sociopath to conduct disorder.

“I feel sorry for Larry, but I don’t get that sad about it,” Fox read from Hoag­land’s interviews with Mc­Inerney.

“He doesn’t get sad about anything,” Hoag­land said, adding that was how his father taught him to behave.

Fox argued Hoag­land has essentially said it was King’s own fault that he was killed, but Hoag­land said that was untrue.

“Brandon did not kill him because he was gay,” he said.

When Mc­Inerney’s lawyer Robyn Bramson asked questions of Hoag­land, he said he reinterviewed Mc­Inerney on Sunday and learned more details of the abuse he suffered as a child and some of the interactions between him and King.

He said Mc­Inerney denied the incident on the basketball court at the time because he thought he was going to prison on a plea deal and didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He didn’t want to be a sexual target and was deeply bothered by the incident, Hoag­land said.

“He felt embarrassed and humiliated by it, since it had occurred in a public setting with his peers around,” Hoag­land said.

Mc­Inerney also said it had happened about a week before the shooting, not the day before. He also recounted a time before that when King asked him to be his valentine in the boys’ bathroom.

“He was embarrassed and humiliated and he felt victimized that this was being done to him,” he said, characterizing King’s behavior as bullying.

Mc­Inerney also told Hoag­land that had King not been at school on that day, he never would have shot him, as his anger would have ebbed. When he shot King, it was like someone else was doing it and he wasn’t aware of pulling the trigger, he told Hoag­land on Sunday.

Hoag­land’s testimony will continue today.

When a juror asked how much longer the case would go on, the judge said testimony will likely go another week and the jury could start deliberating by next Wednesday.