Let’s cut with the oversimplifications.
Trayvon was loitering in the rain off the sidewalk, near townhomes in a neighborhood that had been burglarized frequently in the recent past. Zimmerman thought he might be high as well.
Zimmerman gave a reasonable response: he called police and tried to keep them abreast of where Trayvon was at.
Trayvon noticed that somebody was watching him. He presumably had no way to know whether it was a “good guy” or a “bad guy”. He hid. A reasonable response.
Zimmerman couldn’t see Trayvon any more. He headed back to his truck. At that point neither Trayvon nor Zimmerman has any reason to pursue things further. The reasonable response would be for both of them to go home, or to make further contact with police regarding what had happened.
Then Trayvon comes around and initiates a conversation with Z by asking why Z is following him - a reasonable action if he wasn’t afraid of Z and wanted to clear up what had just happened. Z responds by asking why Trayvon is in the neighborhood, which is the reason why Z was trying to keep track of him - a reasonable action for somebody who wants to make sure that somebody isn’t “up to no good”.
To that point everything was fine.
The next thing anybody knew, Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman and Zimmerman was screaming for help. By the time the cops arrived Zimmerman had a broken nose and a gash on the back of his head, and Trayvon had a fatal gunshot wound and no injuries.
How would anybody explain those facts if Zimmerman chose to attack/shoot Trayvon out of the blue as they were beginning to ask for an explanation of the other’s behavior?
Have there been any more robberies in that neighborhood?
Does anyone know?
[[By the time the cops arrived Zimmerman had a broken nose and a gash on the back of his head,]]
That’s an excellent point- IF Zimmerman ‘hunted down’ trayvon like a dog, and Zimmerman had every itnention of shooting a black kid, then why does Zimmerman have injuries? Zimmerman had the gun- He could have swhot martin at any point qwhen martin was feet away
IF it had been zimmerman’s intention to ‘shoot an unarmed child’ like sharpton and jackson and many otrher blak folks are claiming-
TYhis whole case is a compelte travesty of justice! An d per usual, the ‘guilty of being white’ crowd just cowers i nthe background and lets this compelte travesdtyu unfold without doign a thing asbout it, and our ‘leader’ does absolutely nothign to stop this, and infactr has fueled this travesty and violations of the constitutional rights
Trayvon was loitering in the rain off the sidewalk, near townhomes in a neighborhood that had been burglarized frequently in the recent past. Zimmerman thought he might be high as well.
Zimmerman gave a reasonable response: he called police and tried to keep them abreast of where Trayvon was at.
Trayvon noticed that somebody was watching him. He presumably had no way to know whether it was a “good guy” or a “bad guy”. He hid. A reasonable response.
Zimmerman couldn’t see Trayvon any more. He headed back to his truck. At that point neither Trayvon nor Zimmerman has any reason to pursue things further. The reasonable response would be for both of them to go home, or to make further contact with police regarding what had happened.
Then Trayvon comes around and initiates a conversation with Z by asking why Z is following him - a reasonable action if he wasn’t afraid of Z and wanted to clear up what had just happened. Z responds by asking why Trayvon is in the neighborhood, which is the reason why Z was trying to keep track of him - a reasonable action for somebody who wants to make sure that somebody isn’t “up to no good”.
The problem is that bolded part - from what I've read, we only have Zimmerman's statement as to the accuracy of those events. It is possible that Zimmerman did stop running after Martin when the dispatcher made the suggestion. But there is no independent verification that he returned to his truck, only his statement.
There is also no independent verification that Martin was the one to approach him. The statement by Martin's girlfriend was that Martin SPOKE first. If Martin did duck out of sight and Zimmerman was still walking around trying to catch a glimpse of where he went, it is possible that he rounded a corner and found Martin. In which case it would be very reasonable for Martin to respond with "Why you following me?"
How thing disintegrated into a life and death struggle isn't as open and shut as so many are implying. Based on what I've read of the evidence so far, they don't have anything to verify Zimmerman's version of events but they don't have anything to dispute it either. Unless they've got an ace up their sleeve that hasn't been released to the public yet, this is going to be a very difficult case for them to win.