The controversial shooting in Sanford, Florida isn't forgotten by me and LaReyna. This ongoing issue with the shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin by "volunteer neighborhood watcher" George Zimmerman has been the major story of the 2012 news session.
George Zimmerman is currently in hiding awaiting his second degree murder trial. After pressure to Governor Rick Scott (R-Florida), the case was reopened after Sanford Police took the side of the shooter.
A special prosecutor for the case has found evidence that debunks the claim that Trayvon Martin reached for George Zimmerman's gun under his coat.
The situation which began in February 2012, was a young teenager spending time with his father and girlfriend went to the local 7-Eleven store to pick up an Arizona Ice Tea and pack of Skittles for his younger brother. It was a rainy night and Martin decided to wear his dark hoodie. As he left the convenience store he goes through the Twin Lakes Residential Gated Community. As he was approaching his home, he was followed by a young man who was a volunteer neighborhood watcher for the gated community.
Apparently, George Zimmerman complained to law enforcement about suspicious activity previously. This night was one of them where he felt that the young teenager was acting in way that appeared to pose as a threat. As Martin was on his phone talking to his girlfriend, he informed her that he was being followed by someone. Zimmerman was on the phone with a 9-1-1 operator saying that he's following this individual.
As Martin tried to duck through homes, Zimmerman told the operator that he was closing in on him. The operator told him not to follow in words "We don't need you to do that!"
Somehow they confronted each other. Zimmerman claimed that Martin came up on him as he was going back to his vehicle. When words gotten heated, Zimmerman claimed that Martin sucker punched him and tried to choke him. As they scuffle, according to Zimmerman, the teenager saw his gun, and tried to reach for it. So in an attempt to reach for the gun, the young man shoots the teenager in the chest. The injuries killed him.
The Sanford Police take Zimmerman in and wanted to know what his side of the story was. Zimmerman told the police that he was doing his job as a neighborhood watcher. He said the teenager was posing a danger to his safety, so he shot him. The police lets him go and hence the beginning of a massive boycott of the city of Sanford, Florida.
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| Trayvon Martin spent most of his life on the go! |
The Republican led legislature were trying to ease up the concerns of the National Rifle Association and Gun Owner's Association. They passed a controversial "Stand Your Ground" law in which a person can use deadly force if an individual poses a threat to the person carrying a firearm.
The boycott has gotten the attention of the national media. The mainstream media came down to Florida.
Liberals and conservatives equally took sides. Each of them had a reason of concern. Liberals thought that Martin's race was a factor to this shooting. Conservatives thought that Zimmerman's reaction to a threat was justified.
The 2012 Republican Candidates had an opinion of it. President Barack Obama had an opinion of it. And yes, what the president said matters. It matters so much, it pissed off the conservatives. They believe that anytime the president takes a side in a controversial issue, it's political expediency.
President Barack Obama asked the U.S. Justice Department to look into the matter. Attorney General Eric Holder and the FBI are probing the handling of this case.
Conservatives and White Supremacists were angry. Conservatives were already blaming the president for playing the race card and call to question incidents that involved Blacks or Hispanics attacking White people.
The white supremacists were hacking into the email account of the family of Trayvon Martin. They took his pictures and sent them to conservative news agitators like Michelle Malkin, Matt Drudge and Sean Hannity.
They wanted to discredit the victim. They looking into the teenager's troubled background. They criticized the parents as being greedy money honey "NIGGERS!"
They called Trayvon Martin, "Traycoon", "wannabe gangsta", "one dead Nigger" and the like.
George Zimmerman on the other hand was getting death threats from individuals who feel that he got off with murder. The New Black Panthers, a radical Black separatist group posted flyers for the apprehension of Zimmerman. The Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson traveled to Florida to give solidarity to Martin's family. The media has unearthed George Zimmerman's history. Some of his friends claim that he had issues with Blacks, Hispanics and Muslims. His father came to his son's defense by going on friendlier news outlets like Fox News. Sean Hannity has offered Zimmerman legal advice and it was reported that he was interested in helping Zimmerman beat his court case. Sean Hannity managed to snag the first interview with Zimmerman.
When the prosecutors had the evidence to charge Zimmerman with second degree murder, he was arrest and booked into jail. The judge preceding over the case was relieved of his duties after two epic failures.
The judge ordered a low bond for Zimmerman in his first hearing. After he posted bail, he went to launch his official website asking for donations to help his legal case. The website pulled in over $250,000 in aid. This information made it to the prosecutors. The prosecutors went to the judge and asked to have his bond revoked.
When he was arrested he was in the Seminole County Jail talking to his wife, Shelley. He ended up incriminated himself once again!
He tried to maneuver funds to his secondary account. He asked his wife to lie while under oath.
They used coded language to seal up his secondary passport, extra accounts and owed debts. If he was to beat the case, he was going to walk out of jail wearing a hoodie as the audiotapes were rolling.
He didn't know he was recorded while in jail. So as he was talking to his wife, Seminole County Sheriff's were listening.
After finding out about this latest development, the judge revoked his bond and ordered him back to jail.
George Zimmerman and his wife Shelley were charged with perjury.
Now in June, Zimmerman managed to post a full $1 million dollar bond. And he's now out on electronic monitoring and ordered not to leave the state.
Information came out that the story Zimmerman told to the police a story that's not credible.
Prosecutors at the State Attorney’s office released findings of forensic results that could throw the defense of George Zimmerman out the window. The forensic results found no evidence that Trayvon had any interaction with the gun of George Zimmerman, charged with the killing of Trayvon.
The Orlando Sentinel reports, Florida state scientists checked several parts of the 9 mm handgun: its grip, trigger, slide and holster. They found Zimmerman's DNA and that belonging to other unidentifiable people but none that matched Trayvon, records show.
The gun evidence is important because Zimmerman told Sanford police he opened fire only after the 17-year-old pinned him to the ground and reached for the gun he wore holstered on his waist.
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| Shelley Zimmerman arrested for perjury. |
In a re-enactment for Sanford police the next day, Zimmerman did not say or show that the two had struggled over the gun, only that Trayvon had extended his hand toward it.
The 28-year-old Zimmerman killed Trayvon, a Miami Gardens high school junior, Feb. 26 in Sanford.
Zimmerman says he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors say Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer, spotted the black teenager, profiled him, assumed he was about to commit a crime, began following him then murdered him.
Prosecutors today released to the public several hundred pages of evidence. It included no bombshells.
The DNA evidence was among the most compelling because it confirmed that Zimmerman and Trayvon had been in extremely close contact.
Several neighbors reported seeing one on top of the other in a fight that left one of them screaming, Zimmerman with a broken nose and small gashes to his head and Trayvon dead from a gunshot wound to the heart.
Special Prosecutor Angela Corey released some DNA evidence May 17 but more details today. Records from the FDLE's Orlando lab show scientists there found a Trayvon-Zimmerman DNA mixture in a blood stain on Zimmerman's red-orange jacket.
Zimmerman's DNA was found in a stain on Trayvon's shirt. Scientists found on that same piece of clothing a Zimmerman-Trayvon mix of DNA, they reported.
The new evidence also reveals that the local president of the NAACP sent Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee an email three days after the shooting, asking to meet and discuss Trayvon's shooting.
It's unclear when or whether that meeting with Turner Clayton Jr. happened.
Lee and his agency's investigation into the shooting were harshly criticized by local and national civil rights leaders and Trayvon's family. Lee was fired a few months later.
On March 8, the day Trayvon's father held an Orlando press conference, calling for his son's killer to be arrested, the case began drawing national media attention. Lee began receiving thousands of angry emails from across the country.
Many were abusive, accusing Lee of racism, incompetence or both. Numerous emailers in March and April asked Lee how he could sleep at night.
"Is george Zimmerman a personal friend?" asked one non-grammatical emailer. "I cant imagine why he hasn't been charged with 1st degree murder otherwise."
Another emailer, who identified himself as a Chicago resident, called the lack of an arrest "sickening beyond words."
Beginning on March 13, Lee received hundreds of copies of a Change.org petition asking him to "Prosecute the killer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin." That night, he received an email from Orlando Police Department Chief Paul Rooney, who wrote, "if you need anything don't hesitate to call… take care my friend."
The emails show Rooney was just the first of several police chiefs to voice support. Lee also recieved positive messages from the heads of police departments in Lake Mary, Parker, Ponce Inlet and at the University of Central Florida.
The new evidence also includes diagrams drawn by some eye-witnesses.
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| The arrest of George Zimmerman. |
Zimmerman was wearing a red jacket that night and told police that Trayvon, who was wearing a dark gray sweatshirt, pinned him to the ground and was hammering his head into the sidewalk.
One witness diagram shows two stick figures and the words "black shirt top" and "red shirt bottom," an apparent reference to Trayvon being on top and Zimmerman on the bottom.
The new evidence also includes a recorded statement by the 7-Eleven clerk who waited on Trayvon about an hour before Zimmerman fatally shot the teenager.
On March 29, a month later, FDLE agents showed the employee the store's security video of that night and asked him if he recognized Trayvon.
"Did you have any idea you were the 7-Eleven clerk that sold him the famous Skittles?" the agent asked.
"Nah," said the clerk, whose name was erased from the recording.
A written summary of that finding was released by prosecutors earlier.
The new records include more than 200 photos, but they revealed little new evidence. Most are of the Sanford townhouse community where the shooting took place but long after it had been cleared of evidence.
Eight photos were taken by a private investigator hired by Trayvon's family. They, also, show the scene of the shooting, well after the evidence had been cleared away but appear to be taken from the spots where individual witnesses say they were standing when they saw or heard the fight between Zimmerman and Trayvon.
Also released today are records that show that on March 6, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office was poised to release 911 calls made the night of the shooting to CBS news. They are dramatic. In one, Zimmerman describes Trayvon to a dispatcher as a suspicious black man whom he does not recognize and who is loitering in a neighborhood that's had a great many break-ins.
In another, a voice can be heard screaming for help then a gunshot.
The Sheriff's Office was on the verge of releasing that information but Sanford police on March 6 told the agency not to, saying they were still part of an active criminal investigation. Trayvon's family then sued the city of Sanford, demanding their release, and the city acquiesced, releasing them March 16.
Prosecutors today released time-stamped dispatch records, showing to the second when Zimmerman called police and when that gunshot was heard in the background of a 911 call by a neighbor.
They differ slightly from a timeline prepared by Sanford police and released several months ago. For example, the county dispatch records show that Zimmerman reported that Trayvon was running at 19:11:59, a minute 20 seconds before Sanford police indicated he reported that.
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| Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea were items Trayvon Martin carried. |
But the two sources differ by only 13 seconds on when the gunshot can be heard: Sanford police say it was at 19:17:20 vs. 19:17:07 for the county.
All of today's records were released last month to defense attorneys.
Prosecutors gave Zimmerman's defense 217 photos from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, eight photos taken by a private investigator, Zimmerman's school records from Manassas, Va., eight dispatch reports from the radio dispatch center at the Seminole County Sheriff's Office, which handles calls for the city of Sanford; several crime scene drawings made by witnesses and the cell phone records of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who Zimmerman shot Feb. 26.
Some of those pieces of evidence were not released, including the cell phone records and Zimmerman's school records.
rstutzman@tribune.com or 407-650-6394 and
jeweiner@tribune.com or 407-650-6394.
