http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/trayvon-martin-case-timeline-of-events/In summary, here is what happened:
Trayvon Martin, a Black teenage boy from Miami Gardens (in the same area where my university is located), was staying with a relative in a gated community in Sanford, in Central Florida. He went out one evening to the convenience store, bought a some tea and Skittles, and was stopped by George Zimmerman, a Hispanic "neighborhood watch" type, who stopped him. He was talking on his cellphone with his girlfriend when Zimmerman started following him. Then she heard Treyvon cry out, Zimmerman say something that5 sounded like a "racial epithet", and a shot. Then silence.
Zimmerman who weighs 200 lbs, said that he was threatened and shot Martin in self-defense. The Sanford police actually took this at face value and Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged. Apparently Zimmerman being wet and having a bloody nose was added by the police AFTER the report was issued.
Zimmerman reported the hoodie-wearing Martin as "suspicious" and said he was going to follow him to the cops. The dispatcher told him not to do this. He did it anyway.
This is what the FL Legislature got for its "Stand your ground" law.
I have noted that on TV crime shows, anyone wearing a hoodie is a bad guy. Good guys never wear hoodies.
About the only thing that I could say against Treyvon Martin is that he should have refrained from being a hoodie, and refrained from being Black. Of course, it is also true that people in gated communities often live there because they are scaredy cats and paranoid. Otherwise, they would not pay extra to live in their silly little fortresses.
Zimmerman should have not been carrying a gun. Perhaps a taser or pepper spray, not a gun. Whatever Trayvon was guilty of, it did not merit the death penalty. Death by gun nut is not the prescribed death penalty, even in Florida.