George Zimmerman murdered him.
Travon Martin is dead. George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder he committed.
Travon Martin--who was not a criminal fugitive and posed no threat to George Zimmerman until George Zimmerman followed, harassed, and then accosted him--died because he was a black teenager. Was killed because he was walking with some candy in a paper sack and Zimmerman assumed he was up to no good.
George Zimmerman--who had a history of repeatedly calling in to the police about "suspicious persons" in his neighborhood, all of them persons of color, who carried a firearm "for self-defense" and then went out looking for reasons to feel he needed to use it...a man who, if he lived in my neighborhood, would scare the sh@t out of me, who had been told by police to quit following Travon Martin and let the police handle the situation--finally got his wish. He got to shoot someone and get away with it, and be a hero to every racist in the country.
Justice denied.
George Zimmerman is a murderer. He is also probably mentally unstable, because mentally stable people don't follow other people around in their cars, threatening, scaring, and finally accosting them, just so they have an excuse to shoot them. Mentally stable people also don't assume every black or brown kid walking around with a bag of candy is a criminal. Mentally stable people don't disobey police orders to cease following and harassing someone they suspect. Mentally stable people, in other words, don't go looking for a reason to "be a hero" and shoot somebody. It is clear to me and every other thinking person in the country that if a black adult followed a white kid around in a pickup, reported it to police, was told to quit following the kid, and eventually got out of his truck and accosted the kid, then shot him...that black adult would certainly be convicted of murder. If I black adult followed a black kid around in his truck the same way and ended up shooting him...that blackadult would certainly be convicted of murder. If a white adult followed a white kid around in his truck the same way and ended up shooting him, that white adult would also be convicted. But because it was a white man killing a black kid...he gets away with murder. Justice denied. All the sympathy poured on poor old George, who was ONLY trying to DEFEND himself...after deliberately setting out, with a firearm, to harass a kid who was not doing anything wrong, after disobeying police orders to cease and desist...all the lies presented about Travon--including pictures of an older black man that some posted online to prove that Travon wasn't a kid and was scary, so George was entitled to feel scared enough to shoot him. And his life will never be the same....what about Travon's life, over before he reached maturity? What about his mother's life, after her son was murdered and his murderer walks free? What about all the other lives Zimmerman has smeared with his excuses and the excuses made for him, the damage he and his defenders and the verdict have done to relations between the races? JUSTICE DENIED.