Slain gay student pushed limits, witness says

CHATSWORTH, Calif. - A former Ventura County school official says a gay student who was shot and killed in 2008 said sexually inappropriate things to other students in the weeks before the shooting.

Joy Epstein, the former vice president of E. O. Green School, testified Monday that 15-year-old Larry King pushed boundaries by wearing women's high-heeled boots and makeup.

Epstein said she warned King that dressing differently could make things hard on him but she and other teachers didn't discourage him because it wasn't outside the school's dress code.

Brandon McInerney, now 17, is accused of killing King in a computer lab.

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Prosecutors say McInerney was motivated by white supremacy to commit a hate crime.

McInerney's defense says he was pushed over the edge by King's unwelcome advances.

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Jurors were expected to hear from students who will testify about the rocky relationship between the two boys. Among them, they will hear from one friend who said he heard King tell the defendant, "'I love you, baby"' the day before the shooting, Fox said.

Another friend is expected to testify that McInerney said, "Say goodbye to your friend Larry because you won't see him after tomorrow."

White supremacist materials were found in McInerney's bedroom, including books and drawings of swastikas. McInerney didn't attend a school field trip to the Museum of Tolerance, the educational arm of the human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center, court records showed.

McInerney, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, has pleaded not guilty to murder, lying in wait and a hate crime.

On the other side, defense attorney Scott Wippert said his client reached an emotional breaking point when he shot King and should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Both teens came from broken homes, but King was the aggressor by making unwanted sexual advances to McInerney and other boys, Wippert said.

"He did this out of heat of passion," Wippert said of McInerney. "These were two troubled young men and this was a tragedy."

McInerney came from an abusive household where his father, William McInerney, was sentenced for battery against his mother in 2000. William McInerney also was accused of shooting her in the elbow several months before his son was born.

He died in March 2009 of blunt-force head trauma at his home. The coroner ruled his death was accidental.

Larry also had a rough upbringing. He lived at a center for abused and neglected children in the months before his death.

Gay-rights advocates and parents in Oxnard, a city about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles, wondered why school officials hadn't done more to stop the harassment toward Larry by students, including McInerney.

Larry's family sued the school district, among two dozen defendants, for failing to protect the teen.