Documents shed new light on Trayvon Martin killing

KYLE HIGHTOWER

MIKE SCHNEIDER

Asso­ci­ated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. — Trayvon Mar­tin had mar­i­juana in his sys­tem. He was shot through the heart at close range. George Zim­mer­man had a bro­ken nose, bruises and bloody cuts on the back of his head.

The lead inves­ti­ga­tor wanted to charge Zim­mer­man with manslaugh­ter in the weeks after the shoot­ing but was overruled.

These are among the details revealed in nearly 200 pages of doc­u­ments, pho­tos and audio record­ings that were released Thurs­day in a case that has riv­eted the nation. Yet it’s still unclear what exactly hap­pened and whether it was racially motivated.

The evi­dence sup­ports Zimmerman’s con­tention that he was being beat up when he fired the fatal shot. At the same time, it bol­sters the argu­ment of Martin’s par­ents that Zim­mer­man was pro­fil­ing Mar­tin and that the whole con­fronta­tion could have been avoided if not for Zimmerman’s actions.

Many of the per­ti­nent ques­tions remain unclear: What was in Zimmerman’s mind when he began to fol­low Mar­tin in the gated com­mu­nity where he lived? How did the con­fronta­tion between the two begin? Whose screams for help were cap­tured on 911 calls? And why did Zim­mer­man feel that deadly force was warranted?

Another oppor­tu­nity for answers isn’t likely to come until a hear­ing later this year in which Zim­mer­man is expected to claim the shoot­ing was jus­ti­fied under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. Zimmerman’s attor­ney, Mark O’Mara, didn’t return a phone call seek­ing com­ment Thursday.

The evi­dence sup­port­ing Zimmerman’s defense includes a photo show­ing the neigh­bor­hood watch vol­un­teer with a bloody nose on the night of the fight. A para­medic report says Zim­mer­man had a 1-inch lac­er­a­tion on his head and fore­head abrasion.

“Bleed­ing ten­der­ness to his nose, and a small lac­er­a­tion to the back of his head. All injuries have minor bleed­ing,” para­medic Michael Brandy wrote about Zimmerman’s injuries in the report.

Whether Zim­mer­man was injured in the Feb. 26 alter­ca­tion with Mar­tin has been a key ques­tion. The 28-year-old has claimed self-defense and said he only fired because the unarmed teenager attacked him.

Zim­mer­man was not arrested for weeks because he invoked Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which does not require a per­son to retreat in the face of a seri­ous threat. He was released on bail and is in hid­ing while he awaits trial on a second-degree mur­der charge. He has pleaded not guilty.

Other evi­dence sup­ports the con­tention of Martin’s par­ents that Zim­mer­man was the aggressor.

The inves­ti­ga­tor who called for Zimmerman’s arrest, Christo­pher Serino, told pros­e­cu­tors that the fight could have been avoided if Zim­mer­man had remained in his vehi­cle and awaited the arrival of law enforce­ment. He said Zim­mer­man, after leav­ing his vehi­cle, could have iden­ti­fied him­self to Mar­tin as a con­cerned cit­i­zen and talked to him instead of con­fronting him. The report was writ­ten on March 13, nearly a month before Zimmerman’s even­tual arrest.

He said there is no evi­dence Mar­tin was involved in any crim­i­nal activ­ity as he walked from a con­ve­nience store to the home of his father’s fiancee in the same gated com­mu­nity where Zim­mer­man lived.

The lawyer for Martin’s par­ents seized on the investigator’s recommendation.

“The police con­cluded that none of this would have hap­pened if George Zim­mer­man hadn’t got­ten out of his car,” said attor­ney Ben Crump. “If George Zim­mer­man hadn’t got­ten out of his car, they say it was com­pletely avoid­able. That is the headline.”

The release of evi­dence did lit­tle to clear up whose voice is scream­ing for help in the back­ground of sev­eral 911 calls made dur­ing the fight.

Since first hear­ing the calls in early March, Martin’s mother, Syb­rina Ful­ton, has been unequiv­o­cal in say­ing that it was her son’s voice on the tapes.

But Serino wrote in a report that he played a 911 call for Martin’s father, Tracy, in which the screams are heard mul­ti­ple times.

“I asked Mr. Mar­tin if the voice call­ing for help was that of his son,” the offi­cer wrote. “Mr. Mar­tin, clearly emo­tion­ally impacted by the record­ing, qui­etly responded ‘no.’”

Zimmerman’s father also told inves­ti­ga­tors that it was his son yelling for help on March 19.

“That is absolutely pos­i­tively George Zim­mer­man,” Robert Zim­mer­man said. “He was not just yelling, he sounded like he was scream­ing for his life.”

Inves­ti­ga­tors sent all the record­ings to the FBI for analy­sis. They were asked to deter­mine who was scream­ing, and also if Zim­mer­man might have used an exple­tive in describ­ing Mar­tin. Pros­e­cu­tors said in their charg­ing doc­u­ments that Zim­mer­man said “(exple­tive) punks” in describ­ing Mar­tin as he walked in the neighborhood.

But the ana­lyst who exam­ined the record­ings deter­mined the sound qual­ity is too poor to deci­pher what Zim­mer­man uttered. In regards to the screams dur­ing the alter­ca­tion, there also wasn’t enough clar­ity to deter­mine who it is “due to extreme stress and unsuit­able audio quality.”

The case has become a national racial flash­point because the Mar­tin fam­ily and sup­port­ers con­tend Zim­mer­man sin­gled Mar­tin out because he was black. Zim­mer­man has a Peru­vian mother and a white father.

Two acquain­tances painted an unflat­ter­ing pic­ture of Zim­mer­man in police interviews.

A dis­traught woman told an inves­ti­ga­tor that she stays away from Zim­mer­man because he’s racist and because of things he’s done to her in the past, but she didn’t elab­o­rate on what hap­pened between them.

“I don’t at all know who this kid was or any­thing else. But I know George, and I know that he does not like black peo­ple. He would start some­thing. He’s very con­fronta­tional. It’s in his blood. We’ll just say that,” the uniden­ti­fied woman says in an audio recording.

A man whose name was deleted from the audio told inves­ti­ga­tors said he worked with Zim­mer­man in 2008 for a few months. It wasn’t clear which com­pany it was.

The man, who described his her­itage as “Mid­dle East­ern,” said that when he first started, many employ­ees didn’t like him. Zim­mer­man seized on this, the employee said, and bul­lied him.

Zim­mer­man wanted to “get in” with the clique at work so he exag­ger­ated a Mid­dle East­ern accent when talk­ing about the employee, the man said. The employee told inves­ti­ga­tors that Zim­mer­man made ref­er­ence to ter­ror­ists and bomb­ings when talk­ing about him.

“It was so imma­ture,” said the employee, who ended up writ­ing a let­ter to man­age­ment about Zimmerman.

Zimmerman’s par­ents say he wasn’t racist. They say he had men­tored black stu­dents and had a black relative.

The autopsy says med­ical exam­in­ers found THC, the psy­choac­tive ingre­di­ent in mar­i­juana, when they tested Martin’s blood and urine. A police report shows the 17-year-old had been shot once in the chest and had been pro­nounced dead at the scene. The autopsy says the fatal shot was fired from no more than 18 inches away.

In a police inter­view, Zimmerman’s father, Robert, described the toll the case had taken on fam­ily mem­bers who also are in hid­ing because of safety concerns.

“It just seems like it’s an avalanche and I’m stand­ing at the bot­tom of it,” Robert Zim­mer­man said.

Posted by AP News on May 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.