There’s a pretty decent description of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin at the Seattle Times that adds a little detail I hadn’t noticed elsewhere. Maybe you’ve seen it, but I missed it.
Apparently on the call Zimmerman made to report a suspicious person, at 7:13 or just after there’s a beeping sound indicating a car door is opening. That’s likely when Zimmerman got out of his truck. Here’s the newspaper account —
“When he say this man behind him again, he come and say, this look like he about to do something to him,” the girl told ABC News. “And then Trayvon come and said the man was still behind him, and then I come and say, ‘Run!’ ”
Trayvon did just that.
At 7:13, two minutes into Zimmerman’s call, he tells the police operator: “S — , he’s running.”
A beeping sound is heard, indicating that he has opened his car door. Zimmerman went after Trayvon and, out of breath, muttered profanities. He lost sight of him.
“Are you following him?” the operator asked.
“Yeah.”
“OK, we don’t need you to do that.”
Zimmerman spent almost two more minutes offering directions to the operator. He said he’d meet police by the mailboxes and then, just before hanging up, apparently thought better of it. “Actually, could you have him call me, and I’ll tell him where I’m at?” he said three minutes and 50 seconds into the call. At 7:15, he hung up.
According to CNN, Martin was shot and killed at 7:25. At that point, Zimmerman had been out of his truck for about 12 minutes, and part of that time he was running after Martin. The confrontation between the two took place in a a common backyard area in between two rows of houses, not on the street where a truck might have been parked. The original story, that Zimmerman had just gotten out of his truck briefly to check the address, and that Martin had jumped him as he returned to his truck, is obviously bogus.
The bigger issue here is the “stand your ground” law, and ALEC. To my mind Zimmerman is a victim too, of bad law. As I wrote a few days ago, I have big issues with the idea that anybody should be able to carry a firearm anywhere he wants. And my issue is that a big chunk of humanity doesn’t have the sense God gave mushrooms.
Zimmerman may actually have meant well by his zealous amateur policing of his neighborhood, but it’s obvious he lacked sensible judgment and was not someone the world needed to be carrying a firearm everywhere he went. And I suspect that is true of a large portion of the yahoos carrying guns in America right now. Add to that a law that makes self-defense so ambiguous as to be just about whatever the shooter says it is, and you can pretty much count on there being more stupid, senseless shootings that should never have happened.
And this is a good example of why corporations and organizations want their ALEC’s to work their pals in the legislative branches in the states to pass tort reform laws, and other way of limiting damages – if I were a member of the Martin family, I’d be suing the living sh*t out of the state of Florida, the NRA, and the Sanford PD, for every penny I could get.
If the NRA and the gun makers are as irresponsible as they are, attempting to arm every yahoo in the nation, regardless of mental ability and stability, and the government in a state (or the nation) is equally as irresponsible, the only way to get back some measure of control, is to hit them in the only spot they all really care about – their pockets.
Florida didn’t need the “Stand Your Ground Law.” The ability to defend you, yours, and your property, from a person(s) attacking, is what the “Self-defense” part of law is all about.
What FL did, was codify a Wild West mentality, where anybody, anywhere, who feels the least bit scared or threatened, can pull out a gun and fire. And when firing – shoot to kill, so there’s no witness to give their POV.
One last question – why isn’t it the National Gun Association, instead of the National Rifle association?
A rifle is a pretty obvious weapon as opposed to a handgun. If the NRA stuck to the mission of allowing hunters and homeowners to have rifles to hunt and defend themselves, maybe we wouldn’t be the armed madhouse we are today, where every idjit can buy a handgun – even if they have the mental capacity of a cabbage.
Okay, I’ll apologize in advance for playing amateur detective. I am not very good at it. But, I think this is curious:
“The video shows no obvious sign of injury or blood stains on his clothes, although one shot shows an officer examining the back of Zimmerman’s head, then wiping his hands on his uniform pants.”
There are very strict, very ingrained protocols for dealing with blood borne pathogens at any facility where they might be encountered. Examining an open wound without gloves and wiping your hands on your pants would not qualify as good infection control. The safeguards that are required are repeated so often that ignoring the protocol to the extent of not even scrubbing seems extremely unlikely.
If the officer examining the back of Zimmerman’s head is not gloved, it suggests that no blood was present.
Also, it is interesting that “homicide suspects are not routinely drug tested.” unless they apply for unemployment or food stamps, of course. “The rules are different” in Florida.
It appears that in Florida, applying for food stamps is a worse crime than shooting someone.
maha,
Yes, the only reason Florida’s Governor hasn’t yet declared “NRA Open Season On Entitlement Leeches” is because, well, frankly, that was most of his voting base.
Though, to be fair, most of them were Medicare recipients, and not the Food Stamp or Medicaid ones.
Florida – no longer “The Sunshine State.”
Now, “The Old Gunslingin’ Idjit State.”
I lived in Florida during the era when those annoying plastic hands were fastened to many cars with a spring and a suction cup. Professional mad wag, Dave Barry came up with one that said, “Thank you for not shooting!”.
I thought it was funny, but I didn’t want to give anyone ideas.
The Florida state motto?
If Zimmerman needed to get out his truck to check the address what kind of a neighborhood watch is he? It is a tiny neighborhood ridiculously easy to identify street addresses. Aside from failing as neighborhood watch by shooting his neighbor, it would appear his excuse is not knowing where he is. Google maps will show the geography and how simple it is. Trayvon was closer to his home than Zimmerman was to his at the time of the shooting.