Report:
Zimmerman told police
teen punched him
before fatal shooting
updated 10:04 PM EDT, Mon March 26, 2012
Hundreds of people gather at a park in Sanford, Florida, for a town hall meeting on the shooting of an unarmed youth.
Sanford, Florida (CNN) -- The core of Trayvon Martin's story has been told again and again in recent days -- about how the 17-year-old went out to a Sanford, Florida, convenience store, only to be killed on his way back to his father's fiance's home.
Yet one month later, questions persist as to exactly how and why that happened. The man who admitted shooting the teen has not been charged in connection to the case, much to the dismay of Martin's parents and thousands of strangers nationwide who've rallied behind them.
On Monday, the story continued to gain both complexity, and clarity, thanks to details of the account that Martin's shooter gave to police after the shooting.
George Zimmerman's description is outlined in an Orlando Sentinel article that cited "authorities" as the source of its information. The Sanford Police Department subsequently released a statement that, while condemning what it called"unauthorized leaks," confirmed the newspaper account "is consistent with the information provided to the State Attorney's office by the police department."
Events held around country in response to case
Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, told police he was on his way to the grocery store when he saw Martin, a black male, walking through his gated community, according to the Sentinel report.
"Something's wrong with him," he told a 911 dispatcher, according to the contents of a call released last week. "Yep. He's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands."
The teen started to run, Zimmerman said. When he said he was following the boy, the dispatcher told him, "We don't need you to do that."
Shortly afterward, neighbors began calling 911 to report an apparent altercation, then a gunshot.
The Orlando Sentinel report fills in some blanks, purportedly from Zimmerman's perspective, of what transpired in the meantime.
Zimmerman, according to the Sentinel report, later told police that he lost sight of Martin and was returning to his SUV when the teen approached him. The two exchanged words, according to Zimmerman, who said Martin then punched him in the nose.
On the ground, Zimmerman said he was repeatedly punched and had his head slammed into the sidewalk, according to the Sentinel report. He began yelling, he told police.
Previously released tapes of 911 calls included neighbors saying they had heard hearing screams -- though it wasn't clear whether they came from Zimmerman or Martin.
Mary Cutcher told CNN on Monday that she and Selma Mora Lamilla were in a kitchen nearby when they "heard a whining, someone in distress, and then the gunshot."
They ran outside and, "within seconds," were about 10 feet away from Martin's body, Lamilla said.
"(Zimmerman) was standing over the body, basically straddling the body with his hand on Trayvon's back," said Cutcher, adding that they called three times to him before he finally asked them to call police. "It didn't seem to me that he was trying to help him in any way."
And Martin's girlfriend was on the phone with him prior to the shooting, according to a lawyer for the shooting victim's family. Benjamin Crump said last week that the girl "completely blows Zimmerman's absurd self-defense claim out of the water."
What is evident is that, minutes after that Zimmerman's first 911 call, police arrived at the scene. They found Martin "laying face down in the grass," according to a police report.
A short time later, Martin was pronounced dead.
As to Zimmerman, "his back appeared to be wet and was covered in grass (and he) was also bleeding, from the nose and back of his head," according to the same report.
Zimmerman was questioned, but has not been charged in the case.
This fact has triggered widespread uproar, with nearly three-fourths of Americans -- including 67 percent of whites and 86 percent of non-whites -- believing he should be arrested, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Monday.
Majority in poll call for shooter's arrest
Those attitudes were on display in more than dozen cities Monday. Many demonstrators wore hooded sweatshirts and carried Skittles candy -- just like Martin had, on the night he was killed -- from Atlanta to San Francisco in many communities, big and small, in between to show support for the victim's family and denounce racism, profiling and laws that permit use of force in self-defense.
In the central Florida city of Sanford, a regularly scheduled city commission meeting turned into a forum focused on the Martin case. Near its start, Rev. Al Sharpton presented a petition that he said had been signed by 2 million people calling for Zimmerman's arrest.
He was one of several speakers who called for answers and accountability for police officers who they felt bungled the case by not testing Zimmerman for alcohol and drug levels and not doing a background check on him -- even though they did both for the victim.
"The Sanford police department needs to be held accountable," said an emotional Tracy Martin, Trayvon's father.
Martin's family and supporters have said that they believe race played a role in the shooting. Zimmerman is a white Hispanic. His family says he has been mistakenly portrayed as racist.
On Monday, Martin's supporters continued to insist that Zimmerman should be held responsible for Martin's death -- saying the teen would be alive today if Zimmerman had simply followed the 911 dispatcher's instructions, to stay away.
"We're dealing with a self-appointed watchdog who disobeyed the dispatcher's instructions that he agreed to," said Sharpton, during a press conference earlier Monday with Martin's parents in Sanford. "All else is irrelevant."
That includes, he added, reports that first surfaced Monday in media accounts and later confirmed by a family spokesman that Martin had been suspended after a search of his book bag turned up an empty plastic bag with marijuana residue.
Martin, who lived in Miami, was visiting Sanford after receiving a 10-day suspension from school, according to a family spokesman. An empty plastic bag found in his book bag had marijuana residue, spokesman Ryan Julison confirmed.
"The only comment that I have right now is that they've killed my son and now they're trying to kill his reputation," Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, said at a news conference.
Crump, the family attorney, said authorities were trying to "demonize" the teen.
"Whatever Trayvon Martin was suspended for had absolutely no bearing on what happened on the night of February 26," he said.
Both of Trayvon's parents will be in Washington on Tuesday, attending a House Judiciary Committee meeting with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, according to a news release from the congresswoman's office.
A special prosecutor is investigating the case. A grand jury scheduled to begin deliberations on April 10, but it is uncertain if the group will ever work on the case. The prosecutor, Angela Corey, said Monday on HLN that she has never used a grand jury to decide on charges in a justifiable homicide case.
"We do a thorough investigation. We make that decision ourselves," she said.
The two prosecutors assigned on the case worked through the weekend and will do their best to provide answers quickly, Corey said. They have not yet interviewed Zimmerman, nor does her office know where he is, she said.
An attorney for the Martin family said Monday that any jury that sees the evidence in the case -- much of which she said was collected by investigators working on the Martin family's behalf -- would convict Zimmerman."Clearly, the investigation in this case was either bungled, or ignored completely," Natalie Jackson said of the initial police inquiry.
Sanford authorities say they could not arrest Zimmerman under Florida's "stand your ground" law, which allows people to use deadly force to defend themselves anywhere they feel a reasonable fear of death or serious injury. The evidence police had at the time didn't allow for an arrest, police have said.
In addition to the investigation led by Corey, the state's governor has formed a task force to review the state's "stand your ground" law. The Justice Department is also investigating.
Did you attend a rally for Trayvon Martin? Share your images
Sanford's city manager, Norton Bonaparte, also has said he is seeking an outside review of the police department's handling of the case.
The neighborhood where Zimmerman was volunteering in the neighborhood watch program could also face a lawsuit, the National Association of Black Journalists said, citing Martin family attorney Daryl Parks.
Parks spoke to the group's board of directors over the weekend.
There is evidence that the Twin Lakes homeowners' association told residents who saw suspicious activity to call Zimmerman if they could not contact the police, according to the association's statement.
Meanwhile, a handful of members from the New Black Panther Party have offered a $10,000 reward for Zimmerman's "capture." The group is distinct from the better-known Black Panther Party and is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a "virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson cautioned people not to try to capture Zimmerman, saying it would not only put them at risk of being arrested, but also because it would a distraction.
"The focus must be on Zimmerman himself and what he did," Jackson said.
Joe Oliver, a friend of Zimmerman's told CNN on Monday that Zimmerman is in hiding and all his family members are worried for their safety.
Even with the shooter's account clear, authorities still are working to piece together the details from February 26.
"Right now, we have too many unanswered questions," Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday.
CNN's Kim Segal, Greg Morrison, John Couwels and Vivian Kuo contributed to this report.
__________________________
had a sad history
before Trayvon
BY FRED GRIMM
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
MiamiHerald.com/columnists
The killing of Trayvon Martin was only the most infamous Florida homicide complicated by the legal inanity known as “Stand Your Ground.”
Police in Sanford, maddeningly hesitant in their dealings with the 28-year-old neighborhood watch zealot who shot young Martin, have been widely disparaged for citing the 2005 Florida statute that grotesquely altered the doctrine of self-defense.
But just last week, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beth Bloom bolstered the Sanford cops’ contention that state law now trumps common sense. She sprang another stand-your-ground killer.
Stand Your Ground, the way the law has been interpreted, has proven to be a wild misnomer. Like Trayvon Martin, Pedro Roteta was pursued down a city street by his killer.
On Jan. 25, Roteta had apparently been trying to steal the radio from a truck owned by Greyston Garcia, parked outside his apartment in southwest Miami. Truck burglary’s a crime of course, but not a capital case. Not before 2005.
Garcia grabbed a large knife and chased the 26-year-old Roteta down the block. He caught up with Roteta, who was unarmed except for an unopened pocketknife in his pocket, and stabbed him to death. The confrontation was captured on a surveillance video.
Miami police were not nearly as cautious as the cops in Sanford. Garcia was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. But under the peculiarities of the stand-your-ground statute, the case never went to trial. Judge Bloom decided Wednesday that Garcia was immune from prosecution.
This aspect of the law drives prosecutors to distraction. The Florida Supreme Court, trying to sort out the ineptly written law (a piece of boilerplate legislation contrived by the NRA) ruled that the immunity conferred by stand-your-ground was for a judge, not a jury, to decide. Judge Bloom decided, under the squishy language of the statute, that Garcia “reasonably believed it is necessary” to use deadly force “to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
“We believe this is a determination best made by a jury,” said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, in a bit of understatement. Prosecutors were stunned by the judge’s ruling. So was Miami police Sgt. Ervens Ford, who headed up the homicide investigation. He told The Herald’s David Ovalle that Judge Bloom’s decision was a “travesty of justice.”
Travesties of the Stand Your Ground kind keep adding up. At mid-afternoon on Aug. 11, 2009, a black Maxima chased a beige Infiniti at harrowing speeds down Old Cutler Road. Other cars veered off the road. One innocent motorist was sideswiped before the Infiniti crashed into a clump of bushes, the rear window blasted out, bullet holes in the trunk, spent cartridges littering the interior.
The driver of the Infiniti, Sujaye E. Henry, 26, was killed, slumped over the steering wheel, two bullet wounds in the shoulder, a third through his left eye socket. Here was a homicide brought on by reckless gunfire on a city street, spawned by a dispute over a drug deal. There was a time when Anthony Gonzalez Jr., 31, aka “White Boy,” a passenger in the pursing Maxima and the gunman who fired the fatal shot, might have faced harsh consequences.
The case never went to trial. Gonzalez, after all, as he fired away from the passenger seat, was acting under the permissive parameters of the Stand Your Ground doctrine.
Stand Your Ground preempted any thought of prosecuting a former Broward County deputy sheriff who pumped four rounds into an aggressive panhandler outside a Miami Lakes ice cream parlor in January. The month before, Broward Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes bypassed a jury and acquitted Nour Badi Jarkas, 54, of Plantation, who had shot his estranged wife’s boyfriend four times inside her house in 2009. Judge Holmes cited Stand Your Ground, saying, “nothing was presented ... to rebut the reasonableness of the fear that [Jarkas] testified that he had.”
In 2009, after two FPL workers, in their blue shirts and pith helmets, approached Ernesto Che Vino’s mobile home in Northwest Miami-Dade to shut off the juice, Vino came storming out of the house with his rifle, cuffing one of the workers on the head then firing shots as the two ran for their truck. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge John W. Thornton, “following the dictates of Stand Your Ground,” decided that Vino’s claim that he feared for his life was not unreasonable. He tossed two counts of armed assault and one count of improper exhibition of a firearm.
Essentially, the law requires a judge to read the mind of any assailant who claims self-defense, no matter how outrageous the circumstances. Jurors, of course, would do a fine job of sorting out truly reasonable fears from all this hokum. No mind reading required.
It’s not as if prior to 2005 prosecutors were ringing up convictions on innocent self-defense claimants. In 1986, in South Florida’s most famous case of self-defence, a Miami-Dade grand jury refused to indict Prentice Rasheed, a crime-weary Overtown merchant who had booby-trapped his shop windows and managed to electrocute a burglar. Rather than a criminal defendant, Rasheed became a local folk hero.
Not was there a public outcry to loosen the definition of self defense back in 2005. The law was just another of a series of overreaching and dangerous statutes passed in homage to the National Rifle Association. Some 23 other states have passed variations of Stand Your Ground. The NRA is pushing the law in other states, but perhaps the Trayvon Martin tragedy will slow the gun lobby’s momentum.
The handling of that case, so far, has been a travesty. But the resolution of the Pedro Roteta killing, where the police moved aggressively, was also a travesty.
Sanford police have caught hell for failing to bring charges against shooter George Zimmerman. They have been castigated by civil rights leaders and state and national politicians. Caricatured in the international media. Taunted by protest marchers. Yet, for all their fumbling, when they cite Stand Your Ground, there’s plenty of precedent in Florida that says, sadly, no matter how outrageous, criminal charges just might prove futile.
>via: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/24/v-fullstory/2710297/stand-your-ground-l...
__________________________
Trayvon Martin case:
Shooter may have
expected it to 'blow over'
|
Outrage over the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin has spread nationwide, with congregants at Middle Collegiate Church in New York invited to wear hoodies to Sunday's services in a show of support for Martin. (Seth Wenig/AP / March 25, 2012) |
George Zimmerman, whose fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager has sparked nationwide protests over alleged racial profiling, had thought the entire incident would "blow over," a friend said Sunday. Instead, Zimmerman is hiding amid death threats and demands for his arrest.
Joe Oliver told ABC News that he had never seen any indication Zimmerman, 28, whom he has known for about a decade, is racist. Oliver also said that in the days immediately after the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who is black, he heard that Zimmerman "couldn't stop crying." Zimmerman, who is of Latino and white heritage, has said he fired at Martin in self-defense. Zimmerman had encountered Martin on Feb. 26 as the teenager was walking through a gated community in Sanford, Fla., where Zimmerman is a neighborhood watch volunteer. The fiance of Martin's father lives in the complex, and Martin had been returning to her home after buying candy and a drink at a nearby convenience store. "It's just starting to sink in" to Zimmerman how big the controversy over the shooting has become, Oliver said. "Up until this point, because he was there and he knows what happened ... he has been very confident -- naively -- that this would all blow over." Among other things, the shooting has forced the Sanford police chief, Bill Lee Jr., to temporarily leave his post while the investigation continues. It has also focused attention on Florida's so-calledstand your ground law, which permits people to use deadly force if they feel threatened. Lee has said that because of the law, which took effect in Florida in 2005, police could not arrest Zimmerman. Martin's parents and supporters, however, say evidence from witnesses who called 911 the night of the shooting indicate that Zimmerman followed Martin because he was black. They've alleged that racism is at the root of both the teen's shooting and the decision not to arrest Zimmerman. With Monday marking one month since the shooting, city officials in Sanford -- a lakefront city of 55,000 people about 20 miles from Orlando -- were preparing for thousands to attend the regularly scheduled City Commission meeting Monday evening. The meeting site has been shifted from City Hall to the Civic Center to accommodate crowds, and it will be devoted to discussion of the Martin case. Zimmerman has dropped from sight since the shooting, but in recent days, a lawyer who has described himself as Zimmerman's legal advisor has begun speaking out in defense of Zimmerman. Oliver was the latest in a small group of friends who have come forward to speak up for the shooter. The lawyer, Craig Sonner, has said that Zimmerman had a history of mentoring young blacks, had friends of all races and shows no indication of being a racist. Sonner also said Zimmerman had no choice but to go into hiding during increasingly angry demands that he be arrested. The latest demand came from the New Black Panther Party, which on Saturday offered a $10,000 reward for Zimmerman's capture. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," New Black Panther leader Mikhail Muhammad said when asked whether the offer could incite violence, the Orlando Sentinel reported. At rallies held in solidarity with Martin's family, people have sold T-shirts featuring pictures of Zimmerman below a large "WANTED" sign. And Sonner said he and Zimmerman have received death threats. "Is George a racist? The answer is no, absolutely not," Sonner told the Associated Press. He said Zimmerman's friends "only have good things to say about him" but that many were afraid to come forward because they feared being targeted for supporting Zimmerman. That did not deter Oliver, who said he understood why Zimmerman was fearful. "Wouldn't you be?" he said. "There's someone ... who put a $10,000 bounty on his head." On Sunday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson became the latest activist to come to central Florida to speak about the case. Jackson delivered a sermon at a Baptist church in Eatonville, about 20 miles from Sanford, where he urged people to ensure the case sparked a movement for social change. "There is power in the blood of the innocent," Jackson told the packed church.