What Everyone Should Know About Trayvon Martin (1995-2012)

By Judd Legum on Mar 18, 2012 at 6:19 pm

On February 26, 2012, a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida. The shooter was George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man.* Zimmerman admits killing Martin, but claims he was acting in self-defense. Three weeks after Martin’s death, no arrests have been made and Zimmerman remains free.

Here is what everyone should know about the case:

Ed Jackson at 5:46 PM March 19, 2012

A gated community is established as a secure place for the residence who purchased the homes in it. Most individuals will not go into a gated community with an automobile - seems like someone wanted attentention by struting around where they should not have been. Why didn't the security (police) step in if they were called. A gated (secure) community is not for people to wander around in and if young Mr. Martin had used his God given intellect he would have been elsewhere.

But prosecutors may not be able to charge Zimmerman because of changes made to state law in 2005. Under the old law, people could use deadly force in self-defense only if they had tried to run away or otherwise avoid the danger. The changes removed that duty to retreat and gave Floridians, as the law is written, the right "to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force," if they felt threatened. The changes also meant people could not be prosecuted in such instances.

Prosecutors can have a hard time making a case if there is no one else around to contradict a person who claims self-defense, said David Hill, a criminal defense attorney in Orlando. Thus far, Sanford police have said there is no evidence to contradict Zimmerman's claims.

"If there is nobody around and you pull a gun, you just say, 'Hey, I reasonably believed I was under imminent attack. Hey, sorry. Too bad. But you can't prosecute me,'" Hill said.

According to Crump, the father was told that one of the reasons Zimmerman wasn’t arrested was because he had a “squeaky clean” record. It wasn’t. According to the local news station WFTV, Zimmerman was arrested in 2005 for “battery on a law enforcement officer.”

Furthermore, ABC News reported on Tuesday that one of the responding officers “corrected a witness after she told him that she heard the teen cry for help.” And The Miami Herald published an article on Thursday that said three witnesses had heard the “desperate wail of a child, a gunshot, and then silence.”

WFTV also reported this week that the officer in charge of the scene when Trayvon was shot was also in charge of another controversial case. In 2010, a lieutenant’s son was videotaped attacking a black homeless man. The officer’s son also was not initially arrested in that case. He was later arrested when the television station broke the news.

One of the witnesses was a 13-year-old black boy who recorded a video for The Orlando Sentinel recounting what he saw. The boy is wearing a striped polo shirt, holding a microphone, speaking low and deliberately and has the heavy look of worry and sadness in his eyes. He describes hearing screaming, seeing someone on the ground and hearing gunshots. The video ends with the boy saying, “I just think that sometimes people get stereotyped, and I fit into the stereotype as the person who got shot.”

There was also being mindful that you are being watched in stores. Watched turned to followed as I got older. To this day, if a sales person is overly attentive to what I might be looking for I leave the store. Never to return. And then there was keeping a distance of deniability from white women when walking on the street. Lest you be accused of any number of offenses, from trying to snatch her purse to sexual assault.

Dear Bill,

Thanks for signing my petition, "Prosecute the killer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin."

Winning this campaign is now in your hands. We need to reach out to as many friends as we can to grow this campaign and win.

Thanks for your support,

Tracy Martin

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The murder happened in a gated community where my son's girlfriend lives. Her brother was out walking the dog when the murder occurred. I was in Nashville.

When I returned home, my son's girlfriend was all upset at the killing, largely because her white friends took the side of the murderer. I wasn't here, so I didn't pay much attention to it.

Just now, I saw a segment about the murder on MSNBC. I called her brother to get a first hand account of what happened, because the murderer has yet to be arrested. He claimed self defense.

According to Austin (her brother) he was out walking the dog and saw the white man approach the black boy, who was returning to his father's girlfriend's apartment after walking to a 7-Eleven. (According to news accounts the man had already called the police by this time. Apparently, a black kid walking home in the dark constituted a threat). Austin said he turned away innocuously, but returned to the scene after hearing frantic screams from the boy, yelling for help. he said he saw both the man and the boy on the ground. Then, he said, his dog got away and he ran to get the dog. He heard a shot and the screams for help stopped. Then, he said, he ran home.

The police interviewed him and he told them this story. The assailant claimed self defense. The police saw blood on his lip and his head, so they haven't arrested him yet. The case goes to a grand jury today (I think).

None of the newspaper accounts have noted Austin's testimony in this case. HOW CAN A KID WHO IS SCREAMING FOR HELP AND WHO WAS ACCOSTED BY A GROWNUP IN THE DARK BE ACCUSED OF ASSAULT?



I'm ashamed to say I wasn't incensed when I first heard the story because the victim is from Miami. I didn't start to become concerned until I saw his photo and saw that he looks almost exactly like my 18 year old son.

Now I am incensed.

The point is, the kid was screaming for HELP. It's not like he was holding the murderer down or threatening him.

What happened is obvious. The murderer accosted the kid and tried to hold him (forcibly) until the police arrived. The kid resisted. The murderer drew his gun. The kid screamed for help. The murderer shot an unarmed kid.

And there is a witness.

Let's not forget that this kid weighs 140 lbs and Zimmerman weighs 200 lbs. Let's not forget that zimmerman was armed and Martin was carrying a bag of Skittles.

Federal prosecutors and the FBI have opened an investigation into the killing of an unarmed teen by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida.

The death drew protesters Monday to the courthouse in Seminole County, north of Orlando, to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was shot and killed last month while walking back to his father's fiancee's house in Sanford.

The African-American teen's parents said Monday that they believed race was a factor in their son's death, and the Congressional Black Caucus had called for a federal investigation, saying local police have shown "blatant disregard for justice."

Late Monday, the Justice Department said it would dispatch officials to Sanford to investigate and "to address tension in the community."

This story makes me livid, and so sad.

I don't know what to do. I signed one petition that popped up, but it doesn't seem like enough.

V Dianne Marshall · London, United Kingdom
I am sending a bag of skittle to Police Chief Bill Lee, please do the same. Thank you.
Chief, Bill Lee.
Sanford Police Station.
815 West 13th Street.
Sanford, Fl 32771.
Reply · 1,902 · · Sunday at 3:31pm

I think it's the denial among (mostly) whites that racism is an issue and a deep and everpresent part of the national psyche, that infuriates me the most.

Even the common canard 'playing the race card' twists the truth. No, whites generally don't 'play the race card.' They don't have to -- they LIVE the race card. (And it is largely irrelevant, to me, that the killer is reportedly Latino. We're talking about the experience of African Americans, whose lives are apparently forfeit if they fail to step off the curb.)

I've witnessed that the racism latinos hold towards blacks is often even more overt than that by whites. I don't know why... maybe someone here does.

The neighborhood crime watch volunteer who shot and killed Trayvon Martin last month, called 911 dozens of times in the months that led to the fatal shooting.

This afternoon six of the calls made by George Zimmerman were released by the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.

In four of the recordings Zimmerman called police to report "suspicious" persons — all of whom were black — in or near the Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood.

He called once to report his neighbor's open garage door. And in the sixth call, Zimmerman reports children are "habitually" playing in the street at dusk and running in front of cars. He asked dispatchers to take his complaint anonymously, but provided his name and phone number.

Racism against descendants of the indigenous peoples of the Americas has long been a problem in Mexico.

In the shooter's 911 call the dispatcher asks "Are you following him?" When the guy says "yes", the dispatcher tells him, "We don't need you to do that, sir." The guy had 40-something calls to police about suspicious people in his neighborhood, mostly black. I don't see how he can hide behind the state's self-defense rule if he followed the kid, confronted him, and tried to detain him.

Even if you live in a gated community, if that community is part of a city under the jurisidiction of the local police, aren't those public streets? Doesn't anyone have the right to walk around? With skittles?

"He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man," Martin's friend said. "I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run."

Eventually he would run, said the girl, thinking that he'd managed to escape. But suddenly the strange man was back, cornering Martin.

"Trayvon said, 'What, are you following me for,' and the man said, 'What are you doing here.' Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell. I called him again and he didn't answer the phone."

The line went dead. Besides screams heard on 911 calls that night as Martin and Zimmerman scuffled, those were the last words he said.

A central Florida prosecutor's announcement Tuesday that a grand jury will consider evidence in the case came a day after the Justice Department said it would probe the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The moves follow a day of protests calling for the arrest of George Zimmerman, 28, who claims he shot Martin in self-defense during a confrontation last month in a gated community in Sanford, Fla.

A source very close to the investigation told CBS News that Sanford police were under mounting political pressure from the city and the state to submit their case to the state's attorney before they were confident their part of the investigation was complete. Prosecutors will need to re-interview key witnesses.

The source provided additional details about Zimmerman's self-defense claim that he made to police.
(snip)

Stupid evil racists post a deluge of hateful comments

I don’t even know what to say about this any more; the comments about Trayvon Martin at Fox News are just unbelievable.

Here’s the article: Department of Justice Opens Investigation Into Case of Black Teenager Killed by Neighborhood Watch Captain | Fox News.

This opens the door for more than 3,000 comments from the Fox News audience, packed with whiny right wing victimhood and overt racism. Again.

Idiots. Too much at the link.

I wonder if there is any connection between the homeowner's association for the gated community and rhe nieghborhood watch this clown was part of. If there was some sort of sponsorship, would that make the homeowners association liable to a civil suit?