Observing this year’s National Day of Silence in honor of young Lawrence King.
Lawrence Fobes King (January 13, 1993 – February 14, 2008) was a 15-year-old student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, who was shot twice by a fellow student, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, and kept on life support until two days later.
Newsweek described the shooting as “the most prominent gay-bias crime since the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard”, bringing attention to issues of gun violence as well as gender expression and sexual identity of teenagers.