Best summary I have read on this came from post 47 on another thread:
“Dude. He killed a kid walking down the street”
Not so. He killed a “kid” who was 6ft 3 and had him down on his back punching him in the face according to an eye witness. Try to keep up.
“Zimmerman was justified in using deadly force according to Florida’s STAND YOUR GROUND LAW because Martin was on top of him beating him in the face.
According to this eye witness quoted in this article Zimmerman was getting the worst of it and calling for help once the fighting started.
“The guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, ‘Help! Help!’ and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911,” said the witness, who asked to be identified only by his first name, John.
John said he locked his patio door, ran upstairs and heard at least one gun shot.
“And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point.”
That is why the cops didnt arrest him at the scene after hearing this witness account, observing his bloody nose and his bleeding from the back of he head and grass stains on the back of his shirt. Considering that he had a concealed carry permit, was injured in the scuffle, was in fear for his live, and reasonably thought that Martin was a criminal, The cops let him go after cuffing him when the local prosecutors said there was not enough evidence for manslaughter conviction under Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law.
The witness said it was Zimmerman who was screaming for help and police detectives even ran the 9-11 tapes of the screaming by the “kids” father and the father said the screams were NOT from his son.
Besides Martin is not the angelic 12 year old pictured in almost all the news stories but was almost 18, six foot three, and had been suspended from High School in Miami so he went to Sanford to visit his dad. If you listen to the 9-11 tapes, the kid approached Zimmerman when he was sitting in his truck as a possible intimidation tactic. It is also possible that the kid was not a terrified babe in the woods as portrayed but regarded Zimmerman following him as a white man dissing him and he attacked the watch captain without warning.
Granted, Zimmerman was wrong to follow the kid but IF the kid attacked him he is protected from a manslaughter charge by the SYG Law.However,civil lawsuits against him and the housing complex are another matter.
Lets have a Grand Jury review the evidence and then arrest him if the evidence showed he attacked the kid first.
47 posted on Wed Mar 21 2012 14:50:38 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Uncle Lonny