Trayvon Martin's parents re-live a 'nightmare' (Must read)

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – On the night of Feb. 26, Tracy Martin and his girlfriend had gone out to dinner in Sanford, Fla., leaving his 17-year-old son, Trayvon, behind at the townhouse with plans to watch the NBA All-Star game scheduled to be televised at 7 p.m. from Orlando’s Amway Center.

Trayvon decided to walk to a nearby 7-Eleven convenience store to pick up a bag of Skittles candy and a can of Arizona iced tea before settling in to watch East v. West all-stars. On his way back to the gated community, however, Trayvon was stalked by George Zimmerman, a non-Black neighborhood watch captain armed with a 9 millimeter handgun and a head full of stereotypes about African-American males.

According to 911 tapes, Zimmerman, 28, told the emergency police dispatcher that he had spotted a suspicious young male walking in the neighborhood. “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He is on drugs or something.” Zimmerman said, “These ***holes. They are always getting away.”

When the dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following the young man in his vehicle, Zimmerman confirmed that he was. The 911 operator said, “OK, we don’t need you to do that.” Still, Zimmerman continued to follow Trayvon, who was unarmed. At one point, Zimmerman got out of his SUV, confronted Trayvon and fatally shot him in the chest.

Tracy Martin was unaware that his honor roll son, who was visiting from Miami, had been killed around 7 p.m. that Sunday.

Martin, Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton; Benjamin Crump, the family lawyer; Al Sharpton and former New York Gov. David Patterson participated in an exclusive 1-hour telephone conference call last Thursday with more than three dozen publishers from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA).

“I had been out to dinner. When we got back between 10:15 and 10:45, he wasn’t at home. The night before, he had been to the movies with my nephew, who had recently moved up to the Orlando area from Miami. Every time Trayvon would come up here, they would find something to do, usually they would go to dinner. My nephew is 20 years old, a very responsible young man. So there was not panic at that moment that he was not home. I made several attempts to call his cell phone and it was going straight to voicemail. I called my nephew’s cell phone and it was going straight to voicemail. So at that point, I figured they had been in the movies because they would always go to the movies.”

Tracy Martin and his girlfriend went to bed. But the next morning, the day Martin and his son had planned to return to Miami, he learned that Trayvon still wasn’t back in the house. Tracy called his nephew again, this time reaching him and learning that Trayvon wasn’t with him.

“I had [his girlfriend] call juvenile justice, just to check and see if anyone by the name of Trayvon Martin had been picked up. No Trayvon Martin,” the father told NNPA publishers. “My next call was to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department to see if any kid had been picked up.

“My third call was to a non-emergency number at the Seminole County Sheriff’s Department and I informed them that I was filing a missing person’s report. I let them know it hadn’t been 24 hours, but it was unusual for Trayvon not to return home. I told them we were supposed to be leaving that morning when we woke up. They asked me a few questions about him: date of birth, height, complexion, weight and they told me they would dispatch a unit. Five minutes later, she called me back and asked what was he last wearing. I gave them a description of the clothes that he had on last. She said a unit would be out.”

He said, “I got up, got on clothes, went outside because I knew my kid was going to walk back up to the door. Instead, three cars pulled up to the door, one of them an unmarked police vehicle.

“The first officer approached. I introduced myself and told him I was filing a missing person’s report. The second person to approach was a plainclothes detective. He asked me if I had a recent picture of Trayvon and it just so happened that I had taken a picture in my camera, maybe a week or two prior to the incident. I showed them the picture. He told me to give him a second. He walked to his vehicle, retrieved a folder and asked could we go into the house. We walked into the house. He told me he was going to show me a photo and that he was going to ask me if this was my kid. And he pulled out the photo. From that point, it’s been like a nightmare.”

That nightmare was compounded by the decision not to arrest or prosecute Zimmerman, who admitted killing Trayvon. Led by Attorney Benjamin Crump, the family has been making the rounds of national television programs to share their story – and to express their outrage that Zimmerman hasn’t been brought to justice. Protests, many of them led by college students, have taken place across the country.

“In the Black community, we all see Trayvon in ourselves,” Sharpton said. “We all subconsciously know that we’re born as suspects rather than citizens and that’s what Trayvon was – he was a suspect.”

Sharpton explained, “What happened to Trayvon is that it brought to the surface the fear that all of us have for our children and ourselves. I think White America was stunned. Black America became ignited when we finally got it out there. They [Whites] thought having a Black president had solved it. And now, people working in their offices, in the next cubicle, were saying, ‘No, this is me.’ They relate to Trayvon – it was me.”

After three weeks of mobilizing on social media, keeping the story alive in Black newspapers and African-American radio, the mounting pressure forced Sanford, Fla. officials to release the 911 tapes. Those tapes – which show that Zimmerman disobeyed the 911 dispatcher’s directive that he not follow Trayvon – along with the decision not to arrest Zimmerman, forced Police Chief Bill Lee to temporarily step down as police chief on Thursday.

On April 10, a grand jury will be convened to determine whether Zimmerman should be indicted. Both the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division and the FBI are looking into the case to determine if any federal statues were violated.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has appointed a Task Force on Citizen Safety and Protection to investigate how such tragedies can be avoided in the future. Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll will chair the special panel. Rev. R.B. Holmes, Jr, publisher of the Capital Outlook in Tallahassee, will serve as vice chair.

Sharpton led a rally Thursday night of more than 30,000 people in Sanford, many of them arriving from around the nation. Referring to the police chief, Sharpton said, “We did not come here for a temporary leave of absence. We came for permanent justice – arrest Zimmerman now.”

“I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together, federal, state, and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened,” Obama said. He added, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

On the March 23 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera said, “I am urging the parents of Black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies. I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”

For some reason, Blacks are stigmatized for wearing a hoodie – a sweatshirt with a hood attached to it – but Whites, such as New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, are not.

NBA star Dwayne Wade posted a photo of himself Friday in a hooded top to his social media pages, while LeBron James tweeted a photo of 13 Miami Heat players wearing black hoodies with their heads bowed in a tribute to Trayvon.

“I saw a post that D-Wade had saying, ‘I am Trayvon Martin,’” Tracy Martin said. “To see all these athletes put Trayvon in the same sentence with them, it feels real good. Trayvon was an excellent athlete and if he could hear them saying his name, he would be so moved by it.” On Sunday, many churches honored Trayvon, who was wearing a hoodie when he was killed.

Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, preached the 11 a.m. service in a Morehouse College hoodie. In his sermon, Warnock compared Trayvon Martin to Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Chicago youth who was murdered near Money, Miss. in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a White woman. “Both young boys were killed for crossing some imaginary social line,” Warnock said. “Mr. Zimmerman took a gun to a Skittles fight. Apparently Zimmerman is innocent until proven guilty and Trayvon is guilty until proven innocent.”

“It just reminds me of an awful dream,” she said in the conference call with NNPA publishers. “It just seems like the pain goes away temporarily and then it comes back. It just feels like my heart is just heavy. I still have tears, I still cry. It’s just difficult. Each day is just difficult to get by.” Sanford police claim they couldn’t arrest Zimmerman because he was protected under Florida Statute 776.013 (3), the state’s stand your ground law that gives citizens broad protection if they are acting in self-defense.

Jeb Bush, who as governor of Florida signed “stand your ground” bill into law, said the law does not cover the neighborhood watch captain who shot Trayvon Martin to death.

“This law does not apply to this particular circumstance,” Bush said after an education panel discussion at the University of Texas at Arlington. “Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn’t mean chase after somebody who’s turned their back.”

Reflecting on the moment he was asked by police to identify his son, Tracy Martin said, “I can’t describe the feeling, I can’t describe what was going through my mind because I was actually staring at a photo of my pride and joy on the ground dead. I still see the photo now – his eyes weren’t closed all the way, his mouth wasn’t closed, it was the worst feeling of my life.”

This is my second FReeper name too. After lurking for a while, I signed up on 11/12/01, the day AA Flight 587 slammed into Rockaway Beach. I was able to provide information to those who had questions about the area. Freeper BCM was my neighbor.

Last weekend, after my grandson read some of the comments posted here, he wrote a message and asked me to post it, which I did. He’s a Florida high school student and wanted to share some thoughts from a teenager’s point of view. First and foremost, he asked people to be respectful to the deceased boy, instead of slamming him. Then he went on to explain that a 10-day suspension was very easy to get: sass a teacher, smoke on school grounds, be late too many times, etc. The few took the time to respond to him mocked and insulted him, just as they’ve been mocking and insulting us. It’s too bad, I’ve talked to him often with pride about FR and he would have been a great FReeper … but he wouldn’t touch this site with a 10-foot pole now. He’s thinks it’s full of hateful bigots.

I’ve been called a troll, a consistent dissimulator and a MSM lie-supporter. There’s one, who happens to be on this thread, who has referred to me as an “it” … he’s posted to others about me, without pinging me. I’ve been told to leave this site, to join DU and to rally with Al Sharpton. The wittier ones taunt me because of my freeper name. Pathetically, that’s happened to you too. Then these posters high-5 each other and brag about how cool they are.

Don’t they realize that they look like bullying middle-schoolers to any visitor to this site? They pick fights over stupid things. Where has any semblance of civility gone? The ‘old time freeper’ who sent me the message won’t be posting on these threads anymore. He and others are tired of the treatment they’ve received. But I think that’s exactly what the bullys want … no discussions. no questions, no opposing views are allowed.

If Zimmerman said the person he was watching acted strange, like he was on drugs, and drugs were found in Martin's body, then that gives some credence to the fact that Zimmerman was watching Martin because he was acting strange (beyond walking around off the sidewalks), and not just because he was black. Whether Zimmerman had a legal right to kill Martin depends on Florida law, and the law in question is Florida Statutes Chapter 776, as amended by the Florida Stand Your Ground act of 2005.

Okay ... now let's look at it from another angle. Martin's talking on the phone with his girl, minding his own business, walking back to the apartment. He notices someone watching him intently, slowly following him in his SUV. He's creeped out, decides to get off the main street and takes the cut - the walkway - that runs along the back of the buildings. He notices the guy gets out of his vehicle and follows after him. He's fearful, the creepy guy is now coming after him on foot. Would he be covered by Florida Statutes Chapter 776, as amended by the Florida Stand Your Ground act of 2005?

... one of the elements is Zimmerman's 'reasonable belief,' which will be determined by a reasonable man standard. As with similar standards, the appearance of the other party is relevant.

And what are the other elements? It seems to me that Martin would also have 'reasonable belief' just by the mere action of being followed in the dark, for some unknown reason, by a strange man.

Zimmerman's first action should have been to pull up along side Martin and say something like, "Yo, I'm with the Community Watch, can I help you out?" It would have detered a would-be robber who would have then been aware that he was being watched. If he had done that and Martin had a chance to explain where he was going, maybe Zimmerman would have given him a ride to the apartment.

Your correct, we don't know the facts yet but so many things have been presented as facts .. set in stone .. that just don't make sense.

A red flag for me was when Zimmerman agreed to meet the responding officers at the mailboxes and then told them to call him when they reached the complex so he could tell them where his location was. It indicated (to me at least) that Zimmerman had no intention of returning to his vehicle.

Some have told me that Zimmerman said that because he didn't know what street he was on. I say BS to that. It's been reported that he's patrolled the complex's three streets over and over again. He knew those streets like the back of his hand.

I have to continue this tomorrow when I'm not so tired ...

Good night.

[My grandson's] a Florida high school student. . . . Then he went on to explain that a 10-day suspension was very easy to get

First, I currently live in a major metropolitan area in the southeast, which contains more than a double handful of large school districts. Here, as in the three metropolitan school districts in which I most recently lived, the district set general guidelines but the school set a code of conduct. Suspensions were never set state-side. Unless your grandson was in Trayvon Martin's school district and school, he wouldn't know how difficult it was to get a ten (10) day suspension.

Second, in the metropolitan area in which I live (and in which my wife is a public school teacher) you have to do something major to get a ten (10)-day suspension. You have to earn it. They're not giving out ten-day suspensions for 'sassing' teachers.

A student once told me that every piece of paper, no matter how think, has two sides. (I've never been able to find that attributed to Mr. Jefferson). My quarrel with you is that you don't appear to be willing to acknowledge the other side of the paper.

You use words suggesting there is no other side of the paper.

I'd tell everyone, and I've posted, that there are conflicting accounts. Even the police on the scene arrived at conflicting conclusions. I have no problem with you posting 'the other side of the story' as long phrase it accurately.

If you tell me Martin's girlfriend has refused to give the police an interview, but she says 'x,' I'll listen to what the girlfriend says and know how to order it in my brain based on the disclaimer. If you tell me Martin's girlfriend says 'x' and the police haven't interviewed her yet. Well, you're making it sound as if the police are refusing to interview the girlfriend, and that's just not true. You're adding some special sauce to cast aspersions on the police to show the girlfriend and Martin's case in a bad light. At that point, you are no longer showing us the other side of the paper, you've become a misleading force.

Didn't she do that within 24 hours or so of another key event, Alice? What would have been the likely events, plural, to follow that other event?

Huh?

On Wednesday 3/28 (or certainly on Thursday 3/29 before 5:43 a.m. - because that's when this was posted), ABC news announced the full name of 13-year old witness Austin Brown, a young black male. Until then he had only been known as Martin. Until then, although the mother, Cheryl Brown, had been giving interviews about her son's witnessing the even since at least 3/21, never using her last name, she never said anything about the police pressuring her son.

However, the news media had already interviewed and videotaped 'Cheryl' multiple times.

Suddenly, her son's name is known and her last name is known. What does that mean? It means that he can be approached at school. It means that those with 'social concerns' can find her home and approach her It means that she can receive phone cals, perhaps (just perhaps) even from the right powerful people.I don't know that she did, but I know how right-wing and left-wing activists work. And if you've read the interviews, she's scared. Now she has to be scared because the Black Panthers, with their Uncle Tom comments regarding this matter, and large crowds with their minds made up, know how she is and can find where she lives.

Suddenly, around 12:50 p.m. on Friday, 3/30 she announces that the police coerced her son's story, something she never told anyone in any previous interview.

Do you view Cheryl Brown's statement in a slightly different light now?

Huh? Covered in what way? What acts of of Martin do you think would be covered by Florida Statutes Chapter 776? Please don't tell me you've been taking the position that Zimmerman is culpable for something he did to Martin without reading the Florida law that pertains to Zimmerman's actions.

And Martin's girlfriend said he had gone into the apartment building entryway to get out of the rain. You want me to believe her when it's supportive of your Martin narrative but pretend as is she didn't exist when she's not? No. No. Martin's walking around off the sidewalks wasn't just an avoidance technique from Zimmerman. It's part of what what attracted Zimmerman's attention, or the major thing that attracted Zimmerman's attention. Listen to Martin's girlfriend.

And what are the other elements? It seems to me that Martin would also have 'reasonable belief' just by the mere action of being followed in the dark, for some unknown reason, by a strange man.

"Reasonable belief" of what? Because it means you believe something and a reasonable man would believe it. What are you saying Trayvon Martin believed? First, tell me that, then tell me how you believe that fits into the law: Florida Stat. 776.012 et seq.

Let's try this...

Look at the above map. The walkway is "T" shaped with the short top part of the "T" running between two streets: Twin Trees and Retreat View Circle. The back entrance to the complex is on Retreat View Circle. Zimmerman was on Twin Trees. He told the police dispatcher that he thought the suspicious person (Martin) was heading towards the back entrance.

It seems logical to me that Zimmerman would follow that top portion of the "T" over to Retreat View Circle ... but didn't see Martin running down the street towards the back entrance like it thought he would ... he thought he had lost him.

Meanwhile, Martin had actually turned onto the longer part of the "T" walkway, the one that ran through the backyards of the buildings. I believe the father's girlfriend lived in the last one on the right side. Maybe he had seen Zimmerman continue on to Retreat View Circle and felt safe enough to take temporary shelter from the pouring rain under one of the covered porches (apartment building entryways).

A frustrated/disappointed Zimmerman turns around and heads back to Twin Trees. Maybe he sees movement under one of the porches ... maybe on a whim he decides to check out the longer section of the walkway. Since the incident happened on that longer section, somehow or another he got there.

What does that have to do with anything?

First, you're making an assumption ("It seems logical to me . . ."). Let's stick with facts (and the law) before we declare Zimmerman guilty, okay?

Second, the entirety of the question "did Zimmerman do something for which he should be arrested and subjected to trial" depends on the facts and Florida law (or, if you're talking about a federal charge, federal law).

What Florida law(s) are you claiming Zimmerman violated? When you arrest someone, you arrest them for violating the law (Zimmerman was never arrested, BYW).

Before you charge someone with a crime, you have to charge them with a specific crime.

When you convict someone, you have to convict them of a crime.

What was Zimmerman's crime?

AIW:

I've stated that whether or not Trayvon had tattoos was generally irrelevant. However, I commented when you stated flatly that he had no tattoos and posted photos of Trayvon in an orange/tangerine t-shirt as proof. I stated that your photos didn't show the inside of Trayvon's wrist or the top of his shoulder or upper outer arm. You posted the same photos on another thread and stated flatly again that the showed that Trayvon had no tattoos.

Here's a photo that, according to the file name on the Twiiter server, indicates it was taken on June 17, 2010. It's posted on what appears to be Trayvon Martin's Twitter account before the NO_LIMIT_N**** account, where the first post was “NEW NAME, NEW BACKGROUND, NEW TWEETCON, I MAKE CHANGS B4 NEW YEARS!”

Here's the June 17, 2010 photo:

Notice Tayvon's left upper arm, which isn't visible in one of the photos you posted and is covered by shirt sleeve in the other two. (BTY, I examined the photo at high magnification in Adobe Photoshop CS5.5 and don't see any pixellation, full color pixels, layering, or other evidence of photoshopping the tattoo.) Do you still want to state "Trayvon had no tattoos"? Or is it just possible that you are letting your support for Trayvon Martin get in the way of objectivity?

Are you encouraging the lynch mob out to kill George Zimmerman, by posting nothing but clean cut, innocent looking images of Trayvon Martin?

He had another side, as has been amply demonstrated, and was far from the little angel he’s been portrayed to be.

Did he deserve to die? If he was attempting to kill George Zimmerman, his shooting was justified. This “deserve” business is emotional manipulation.

Why are you such a one note wonder on this?

You've dodged two questions, AIW.

First and most importantly: with what crime are you suggesting the State of Florida charge Zimmerman? if you're going to arrest him and charge him, you have to charge him with a crime. What crime are you alleging that Zimmerman committed under Florida law?

Second, are you sticking to your blunt statement that Martin has no tattoos? You'll note I didn't say it made any difference whether he had a tattoo or not. I'm just asking if you are still stating, as fact, that Trayvon Martin has no tattoos.

Are you saying that because Martin had a picture of a rap singer on a twitter page, he deserved to die?

Did the dormouse say I said that? That is a telling artifact of your reasoning process.

Zimmerman's story is that he was attacked by Martin. No one saw the beginning. Therefore, there is no choice but to believe Zimmerman.

Zimmerman didn't have anything on Martin beyond mere suspicion. It makes no sense for him to have attacked Martin, knowing the police would be arriving momentarily.

On the other hand, it's very believable that Martin was pissed off at being profiled. I see no reason to disbelieve Zimmerman's account that Martin lost it and attacked him. The fact that Martin was hero-worshiping a murderer should make us more at ease with that outcome (at least it does for me). Absent strong evidence it didn't happen that way, there is no justification for charges against Zimmerman.

The cops wanted manslaughter ... the DA didn’t.

No. You're doing it again. You're lying or misrepresenting the facts to make them more favorable to Trayvon Martin.

"Cops' is plural. "'The' cops" means the group of cops or the entire department. No.

The Lead Investigator, Chris Serino, wanted Zimmerman charged with manslaughter. Serino is one policeman. Can you name one other cop (much less the whole department) who wanted Zimmerman charged with manslaughter? If not, then why did say 'the cops wanted manslaughter', except to distort the facts in favor of Trayvon Martin?

Check the names of the other policemen on the full police report. I've never heard their names as asking for a manslaughter charge.

Then think. There are over 900 episode of Law and Order, Law and Order: Criminal Intent or Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (I'm not even counting Law and Order: LA or Law and Order: Trial by Jury)?. Two parts to the justice system. The district attorney's office decides how and whether to charge people if they're arrested because the DA and the ADAs know the law. It's why you often hear about policemen going to law school. They don't know the nuances of the law by being a policeman.

One 'cop', Serino, wanted Zimmerman charged with manslaughter (not 'the cops'). The DA, who understands Florida Statutes Chapter 776, declined to prosecute Zimmerman.

At this point, you've demonstrated that (a) you are going to believe anything positive about Martin and negative about Zimmerman without checking the facts; (b) you apparently are going to exaggerate anything positive about Martin or negative about Zimmerman; and (c) you're so reckless after this has been pointed out that your willful recklessness is tantamount to lying.

If you're parroting sources - note that your sources are exaggerating or lying. You shouldn't trust those sources again.

Are you sticking to your blunt statement that Martin had no tattoos? After you first posted pictures to 'prove' Martin had no tattoos, I noted that your photos didn't show Martin's inner wrist, or his shoulder because he was wearing a shirt.

After that, you hopped to another thread and posted the photos again, and again stated as a fact that Trayvon had no tattoos.

I'll ask for the third time, because you keep dodging the answer to post more misrepresentations or lies. Are you sticking to your blunt statement of 'fact', made at least twice, that Trayvon Martin had no tattoos?

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