Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones and Words Can Really Hurt Me
redOrbit.comBy Conoley, Jane Close
7/18/2008
Lawrence King (15 years old) was shot twice in his head on February 12, 2008, by a 14-year-old classmate at E. O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California. The eighth-grade classmates of the perpetrator and the victim described the "bad blood" that existed between the two because of the victim's openly gay appearance. Classmates admitted that the victim, a child from a foster setting, had been the target of harassment because of his feminine dress, hair arrangements, and other mannerisms that were gender non-normative.