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

Madison Times ^ | March 28, 2012 | George E. Curry, NNPA Special Contributor

[maggief]

(Note: Spacing added at line breaks for easier reading.)

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).

Martin told publishers how he learned that his son had been killed.

“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.”

At that point, Tracy Martin still had no clue that his son was dead.

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.”

On Friday, President Obama expressed concern about the case.

“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.”

If the son had dressed like Trayvon, he would have come under criticism.

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.”

Sybrina Fulton is still living with the pain of her son’s death.

“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.”

[trappedincanuckistan]

http://www.wagist.com/2012/dan-linehan/was-trayvon-martin-a-drug-dealer

Close ups of Martin’s multiple tattoos taken from MySpace and Twitter.

[Scoutmaster]

Close ups of Martin’s multiple tattoos taken from MySpace and Twitter.

Respectfully, neither of those photos show Trayvon's face and there's no guarantee that they're Trayvon Martin's tattoos. I believe the one that says "Sybrina" is likely his, because that's his mother's name, but I've never seen a photo of Trayvon that shows his inner wrist, and that tattoo is clearly on an inner wrist. Therefore, we can assume that it's Trayvon Martin's tattoo, but we don't know that for certain.

As for the other, large, tattoo, I don't know that it's Trayvon's. It's on a right upper arm and says "Nana." I don't see that tattoo in the photo I posted above of a shirtless Trayvon. He clearly appears to have a tatto on his left upper arm, but you can't see a tattoo on his right upper arm.

Remember that Trayvon Martin posted photos of other people on his MySpace page - he's posted photos of two rappers that people have mistaken for him. Until we have a photo that shows his face and his upper arm with that tattoo, it's only an assumption that the large tattoo he posted a photo of his tattoo.

[little jeremiah]

The thread about Trayvon Martin’s second twitter has a photo of Martin with the dartboard in the background and his upper arm is visible with a tattoo on it. Comment 7.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2866397/posts

[little jeremiah]

Sheesh, I saw your comment before looking up the thread, you posted it right up above my comment!

I should read more and post less....

[trappedincanuckistan]

Yes that picture from Trayvon’s Twitter show his face, and the upper arm tattoo (which matches the one close up).

[Scoutmaster]

You'll note that I'm making few declaratory statements myself. With respect to tattoos, I'm taking the position that it's likely the Sybrina tattoo is Trayvon Martin's, but we don't know for certain. And I'm taking the position that people cannot say with certainty that Martin had no tattoos. You've seen the photo I posted above. Now look at this photo.

I just found this - on Martin's MySpace. You can't see the inside of his wrists. In one photo you seem to see a tattoo on his upper left arm, but not on the other. Compare the two photos and tell me definitively, if you can, whether Trayvon Martin has tattoos. You don't know when the two photos were taken with respect to each other, or when he was supposed to have gotten tattoos. Me? I'll wait until the coroner's report is released and then I'll know when I read the report (not somebody else's analysis of the report). Currently, I have opinions and I've made assumptions about tattoos - but I'm not passing them off as facts.

Then I find photos like this on that 'Trayvon Martin" MySpace account. Its title: "my dog red."

I see it and I think: is somebody setting us up? How stereotypical is this. Some people are painting Trayvon Martin as a 'thug' wannabe and there's a pit/pit-mix dog on his MySpace account, listed as 'his dog, Red.' It's as if somebody is playing around with the knee-jerk 'Trayvon was a thug' people and is tweaking the MySpace account, yet the photo has 11,000+ hits, similar to the photos of Martin himself, so it appears to have been there all along.

There are going to be people suggesting that the shooting was righteous because Martin may have owned a pitbull, which they'll interpret as proof Martin was a thug, which they'll interpret as proof that Zimmerman's account is true. (Note: That wasn't me taking a position. That was me pointing out that for some people the presence of a pitbull on the MySpace page will be evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman.)

[trappedincanuckistan]

I believe (but don’t know for certain) Trayvon has a large tatto on his upper left arm. He doesn’t have one in the pic you’ve posted, but he is a few years younger (than in the picture of him with the upper left arm tattoo taken from Twitter). The close up picture of the tattoo on his upper arm (taken from MySpace) appears to be the same tattoo that he has on his upper left arm in the picture taken from Twitter. Does that make sense?

[Scoutmaster]

The close up picture of the tattoo on his upper arm (taken from MySpace) appears to be the same tattoo that he has on his upper left arm in the picture taken from Twitter. Does that make sense?

Not unless somebody reversed the photo in an image processing application. The large tattoo in the MySpace photo appears to be on a right upper arm, not a left upper arm, doesn't it?

[moehoward]

"He is proudest of his 4-year campaign to win the release of Kemba Smith,"

"While attending Hampton University, Smith became involved with a drug dealer who "was a major figure in a $4 million crack cocaine ring"............. Smith was sentenced to 24½ years in prison, serving 6½ years before President Clinton's order of clemency."

Sounds like a very open-minded reporter /s

[trappedincanuckistan]

Hmmm...interesting. The close up from MySpace is a right arm. The tattoo from his second Twitter account is on his (it’s definitely Martin) left arm. The tattoos do appear to be the same though (the word written above the tattoo; it’s even sloped the same way).

[trappedincanuckistan]

I just noticed that if you click on his Twitter picture (appearing at DC) it enlarges a bit and there is script that says it is the same tattoo that appears in the close up of the MySpace picture (at wagist).

[CAluvdubya]

Not unless somebody reversed the photo in an image processing application. The large tattoo in the MySpace photo appears to be on a right upper arm, not a left upper arm, doesn't it?

Unless he took the picture himself and it's an image from a mirror. I've seen people post pictures on Face Book that they've taken of themselves in a mirror to get the angle they want. Just a thought....

[Scoutmaster]

Hmmm...interesting.

Yes, because if you used Photoshop, Fireworks, or another imaging program to flip the photo horizontally (turn it into a mirror image), you would go from a left shoulder to a right shoulder . . . but you would also cause the word 'Nana' to appear as a mirror image. It's spelled correctly in the close up - which should mean the photo showing Trayvon's face was the photo that was flipped. Is the writing on Trayvon's hat mirror imaged, or does it read correctly (I'm currently working off my phone's browser)?

[trappedincanuckistan]

The picture of the tattoo and Martin’s face (from Twitter) is taken from too far away to tell exactly what the word says. You can only tell that it is a word, and is sloped in thee same way (from high to low towards the chest).

[trappedincanuckistan]

This is the script that appears below a slightly enlarged Twitter picture at the DC. You have to click on the picture in the article to get the enlarged picture.

Trayvon Martin on Twitter, 2011: This image is the photograph the late Trayvon Martin used to represent his Twitter identity in late 2011, under the screen name “T33ZY_TAUGHT_M3.” Although the Twitter account was deleted, The Daily Caller retrieved it from the social analytics website PeopleBrowsr. The upper-arm tattoo in the image matches one in a close-up photograph on Martin’s MySpace page. (Image: Twitter)

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/29/second-trayvon-martin-twitter-feed-identified/#ixzz1qq4W2hPh

[Scoutmaster]

If those are his tattoos, Trayvon Martin has his mother's name and 'Nana' tattooed on himself. Just noting that for the "he has tattoos, therefore he's a thug" crowd.

I watched a few minutes of Lockdown last night and very few of the inmates at Folsom had Nana and their mother's name tattooed on their skulls, necks, or forearms. I don't know that Martin's tattoos are dispositive on the wanna-be thug question; maybe another brick in the wall with the pitbull, Twitter name, content of Tweets, graffiti on lockers, marijuana pipe and bag, stolen women's jewelry, 'burglary tool,' etc.

[trappedincanuckistan]

I’m not so big on the tattoo angle. I have six and the worst I do is play poker, and have a few beers with friends occasionally.

[Scoutmaster]

Per the Daily Caller: "The upper-arm tattoo in the image matches one in a close-up photograph on Martin’s MySpace page."

Well . . . the tattoo's on the left arm in the photo that show the face, and on the right arm in the close up. And the closeup's not flipped horizontally, because the word "Nana" can be read correctly. So . . . either DC needs to tell me the facial photo is flipped or the tattoos don't really match.

[Scoutmaster]

I’m not so big on the tattoo angle. I have six and the worst I do is play poker, and have a few beers with friends occasionally.

I hope you can tell from my posts that I'm not big on the tattoo angle either (I don't have any tattoos, but I have friends with multiple tattoos, including neck tattoos, and one of the women who works with the church youth mid- and senior high group with me easily beats your six tattoos just on the areas that I can see (upper back, arms, ankles, feet).

I'm just doubly irritated. Irritated at those who saw tattoo and said "aha! Trayvon Martin was a thug!" Irritated at somebody posting photos of Martin in a shirt, not showing his inner wrists, stating as fact (essentially) 'these photos prove Martin had no tattoos.' Whole lot of speculation being passed off as fact when it comes to Zimmerman and Martin.

[TheBattman]

Who is “they”? Then again, you start promoting illegal activity and no wonder they might not get 9 members to admit membership.