Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Benjamin Martin (February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012) was a 17-year-old African-American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American. Martin had accompanied his father to visit his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, Martin was walking back to the fiancée's house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, an altercation happened and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.

Zimmerman was injured during the altercation with Martin. He said he shot Martin in self-defense and was not charged at the time. The police said there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense, and Florida's stand-your-ground law prohibited them from arresting or charging him. After national media focused on the incident, Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried, but a jury acquitted him of second-degree murder and manslaughter in July 2013.

Following Martin's death, rallies, marches, and protests were held across the United States. In March 2012, hundreds of students at his high school held a walkout in support of him. An online petition calling for a full investigation and prosecution of Zimmerman garnered 2.2 million signatures. Also in March, the media coverage surrounding Martin's death became the first story of 2012 to be featured more than the presidential race, which was underway at the time. A national debate about racial profiling and stand-your-ground laws ensued. The governor of Florida appointed a task force to examine the state's self-defense laws. Martin's life was scrutinized by the media and bloggers. The name Trayvon was tweeted more than two million times in the 30 days following the shooting. More than 1,000 people attended the viewing of his remains the day before his funeral, which was held on March 3 in Miami. He was buried in Dade-Memorial Park (North), in Miami. A memorial was dedicated to Martin at the Goldsboro Westside Historical Museum, a Black history museum in Sanford, in July 2013.

Biography

Martin was born in Miami, Florida, and attended both Norland Middle School and Highland Oaks Middle School, in north Miami-Dade County, Florida. He attended Miami Carol City High School in Miami Gardens for his freshman and sophomore years. At the time of the shooting, Martin was a junior at Dr. Michael M. Krop High School in north Miami-Dade.

Martin was born in 1995 in Miami, Florida, to Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, who divorced in 1999. At the time of the shooting, Fulton was a program coordinator for the Miami Dade Housing Authority, and Tracy Martin was a truck driver; they lived near each other in Miami Gardens. Martin's older maternal half-brother, Jahavaris Fulton, was a college student at the time (who would later testify in the Zimmerman trial).

After being divorced, Martin's father married Alicia Stanley, who had two daughters from a previous marriage. They met when Martin was about three years old and were together for about 14 years. Stanley told CNN's Anderson Cooper that before she and Tracy Martin separated, Trayvon was with her 90% of the time, and that she went to all his football games and took care of him when he was sick. She said that Trayvon was a kind and loving person, not a 'thug' as the media portrayed him.

When Martin was nine years old, he pulled his father, who had been immobilized by burns to the legs, out of a fire in their apartment, saving his life. Martin enjoyed sports video games. He washed cars, babysat, and cut grass to earn his own money. Martin had played football at the park since he was five years old and his team was coached in part by his father. Another of Martin's former football coaches said Martin had been one of the best players on their football team (The Wolverines) that played at Forzano Park in Miramar, Florida. Martin played for the Wolverines from ages 8 to 13, and sometimes sat out because his father benched him "because he messed up in school". During his years in high school, Martin volunteered at Forzano Park, working in the concession stand, sometimes staying until 8 or 9 p.m., before going home. Martin's former football coach said he was a shy child and always walked with his hoodie and headphones on listening to music.

Martin's cousin Stephen Martin, who had been in a park telling jokes with Trayvon the night before his death, said that he and Trayvon had been like brothers growing up. He recalled that Trayvon had been very skilled at assembling, repairing, and riding pocket bikes and dirt bikes. Miriam Martin, Trayvon's aunt, and Stephen's mother said her nephew had often stayed over visiting her family. She also said that Trayvon was fond of wearing a hoodie: "it could be 100 degrees outside and he always had his hoodie on."

Martin had wanted to fly or repair airplanes and in mid-2009, enrolled in "Experience Aviation", a seven-week program in Opa-locka, Florida, run by award-winning aviator Barrington Irving. According to Irving, Martin was a polite youth " horeminded me of myself because I had a strong interest in football until I fell in love with aviation." After Martin graduated from the program, he spent the next summer as a volunteer, helping out new students in the aviation program. According to his parents, Martin had hoped to attend the University of Miami or Florida A&M University.

Martin's latter teenage years

When Martin started high school, his goal of playing professional football was put aside in favor of a career working with airplanes. Martin attended Carol City High School in Miami Gardens for his freshman year and most of his sophomore year, before he transferred to Krop High School in north Miami-Dade in 2011. While in his first year at Carol City, Martin attended classes in the mornings at the high school and then went to George T. Baker Aviation School for the rest of his school day. Martin's ninth-grade teacher, who taught him three classes of Aerospace Technology at the Baker Aviation School, said he was a normal student, well-behaved, who passed all his classes. According to another teacher at Carol City, math was his favorite subject, and she said she never saw Martin show disrespect. Some students at Carol City compared Martin's death to that of Emmett Till, one of the nation's most infamous civil rights cases.

Martin's mother had him transferred to Dr. Michael M. Krop High School, which has approximately 2,700 students, for his junior year. Fulton said that her son had average performance in school, and she transferred him because she thought Krop High School was better and she wanted a different environment for him. While a student at Dr. Michael M. Krop High School, Martin had behavioral issues. At the time of the shooting, he was serving a ten-day suspension for having a marijuana pipe and an empty bag containing marijuana residue. He had been suspended twice before, for tardiness and truancy and marking up a door with graffiti. The suspension for graffiti was in October 2011, when Martin was observed by a school police officer on a security camera "hiding and being suspicious" in a restricted area of the school. According to the officer, he later observed Martin marking up a door with "W.T.F." ("what the fuck?"). When his backpack was searched the next day by a Miami-Dade School Police officer, looking for the graffiti marker, the officer found a dozen pieces of women's jewelry, a watch and a screwdriver that was described by the school police officer as a burglary tool. The jewelry found in his backpack included silver wedding bands and earrings with diamonds. When Martin was asked by the officer if the jewelry belonged to his family or a girlfriend, he said a friend had given it to him. When asked for the name of the friend, Martin declined to provide it. The school police impounded the jewelry and sent photographs of it to detectives at Miami-Dade to investigate it further. No evidence surfaced at that time that the jewelry was stolen. An attorney for Martin's family said the parents did not know about the jewelry or screwdriver. Martin was not charged with any crime related to these suspensions and did not have a juvenile record.

Digital footprint

Martin, known on Twitter by the nickname "Slimm", posted thousands of tweets over a period of months, according to the ''Miami Herald