http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17492445
iv been keeping an eye on this for a while, a white neighbourhood watch leader shot dead an unarmed black teen as he walked home.
under stand your law legislation you can kill in defense which is what the shooter says. controversialy the police chief refused to arrest zimmerman(the shooter) or release the 911 calls where the teen can be heard screaming.
its taken a month for anything to start happening and mr z is still not arrested, they never even checked him out, ironically, the suposedly inocent mr z has a criminal record, the shot teen does not.
i think the guy should be in jail, self defense huh?what, he was agresively walking away from you?menacingly screaming?
thoughts?

This disgusts me, plain and simple. The fact that an unarmed kid was shot was bad enough, but the shooter isn't in jail?! That kind of thing was supposed to have died out after the Civil Rights Amendment passed! And the cops are basically protecting him?! What kind of outdated racist bull is this? Last I checked, a can of iced tea doesn't make someone dangerous.

Elara : it does make you wonder,if the shooter was black and the kid white, would the chief have investigated it?
The guy actualy chased him so how can he claim self defence.
the thing that really p'd me off was the sherifs statement, something like we handled this exceptionaly, we upheld the law, you should be proud of this police force.
im not i violent person but id of loved to punch him when i read the stuff he said.
of course the oposition are saying the same thing they always say:
"being stired up by the liberal media"
yup, its a conspiracy...
the chief needs fired, maybe even charged, and the shooter, id give at least 10 years

Absolutely 100% guilty. He needs to be in jail for the rest of his pitiful life. Even if you take the whole race thing out of the equation, he does not deserve to be free. Screw firing him. Take him completely out of society. Any man that would shoot an unarmed person deserves swift punishment, and one who does that to a kid deserves more. I'm not for the death penalty because all that is is a form of revenge and is release for criminals. I would rather he rot in prison for the rest of his years so he can stoop in misery. That is what he deserves.

rcarter2 : when you say screw firing him, you know the chief and shooter are 2 different guys? or maybe you didnt realise i meant the cop should be fired?

How can they say "the liberal media" is stirring it up when even conservatives are condemning this. Heck, gun groups are saying the guy should be arrested and thrown in jail!

And apparently the police chief has stepped down to try an end the firestorm of negative press this has caused. Until Zimmerman is behind bars, I don't think it will though.

And yeah, if the skin colors were reversed, the shooter would be on trial already.

It was a misinterpretation on my part. I read the article and knew the chief was different, but for some reason, I wasn't thinking about that when I said that. My bad

hrm.... if you read the article it talks about some sort of "stand your ground" law that allows someone being attacked to defend themselves.

It sounds like instead of standing his ground the shooter chased this kid down in order to shoot him. I'm not really sure what happened that made this guy feel the need to shoot some kid but I can't see many good reasons for it. Even if this kid had started it somehow I can't justify chasing him down to shoot him or anything like that.

Elara : hes not steped down permanently, hes waiting for the firestorm to die down, not good enough.
geeogree : yeh although on 911 calls you can hear the kid screaming, iv never heard of attackers screaming. it sounds like the kid tried to run away.

Really some people should not be in law enforcement... Killing an unarmed person with a gun should have you locked up that night. There is no reason that Mr. Z should not be locked up already. To be honest I would not want to live in that area... At least the police here do their job, they stopped a pack of wild cats from attacking my Step mom and little sister.

thenumberone : yeah, but that phone call would obviously have happened after the altercation, whatever it was.

I'm not defending the shooter but without knowing why this guy shot the teen for sure I'm hesitant to go after this guy like you all seem to want to. Not saying for one second he shouldn't be arrested but don't we live in a society that says you are innocent until PROVEN guilty? Let's get all the facts before we decide everyone is racist.

How is this racist? This is more along the lines of taking justice into your own hands. He did have good reasons to follow this person as he was wearing a hoodie and that is always suspicious. Plus he was neighborhood watch so that gave him even more reason to follow this person even though the cops told him to not follow him.

How did the guy who shot him know the kid was unarmed? You never know if someone is armed unless you search them or take a wild guess.

The kid probably had no clue he was watchdog and for all we know he tried to fight him or said something that really pissed off the other guy.

Self defense goes both ways in this. If the kid saw the gun and went for it he probably had all right to shoot him. If he just pulled out a gun and shot him with no physical altercation then yeah the guy has no claim for self defense and should be executed in the chair.

geeogree : i never said it was racist, just it might be. And its standard to arrest a murder acused until trial, that hasnt been done.
JigSaw : He was carrying sweets and juice, itd be a bit hard to handle a gun.
thats not the point though, the point is he wasnt arrested and no investigation was made, on top of that the police blocked evidence, thats the issue at hand.

1) He was wearing a hoodie in the rain along with hundreds of other people

2) The two creators of the Stand Your Ground law, which Zimmerman is trying to claim protection under, said that he in NO way qualifies based on the grounds or the spirit of the bill and should be arrested immediately. They did state in an interview from the Huffington Post that if it had been the kid that got the gun from him and Zimmerman who had been shot, that he would have qualified because he was the one that had been being harassed and possibly attacked.

3) Even if the kid copped an attitude, it is no justification to shoot him. Especially not when Zimmerman instigated the confrontation.

4) My outrage is more that he wasn't arrested at all. I'm all for innocent until proven guilty, but this case comes down to motive only... there is no question at all that he shot the kid, and yet he walks free. Even others who have claimed Stand Your Ground in the past have been arrested and put on trial, since I was reading about how it has affected criminal trials in the state previously... all of the outrage is that this guy walked free and clear, and that it took worldwide outrage for them to even think about putting him on trial for it.

I did not see anything in the article that says the 911 call was withheld. Is there another article that points to it? Regardless, I have to agree with Geeo on this because I am not part of the investigation. I will agree that Zimmerman should have been detained for questioning and even though he claims protection under Stand Your Ground he should be placed on trial. He's blowing Stand Your Ground out of proportion.

I really hate that he was shot for no reason. I mean, why would someone shoot an innocent bystander for no apparent reason? It's also bad enough that the person who shot him wasn't placed in jail, what kind of justice are we looking at?

AuraBlaze : couldnt find the article again, this one puts the tape release date at the 16th, he was killed a month agohttp://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-17/news/os-trayvon-martin-shooting-tension-20120317_1_shooting-death-english-teacher-uncle

This type of thing kinda irritates me.

But it's the type of thing people do. Unfortunately.

Under those new self defense laws, I could kill almost anyone and somehow find a reason for it.

That's how messed up it looks.

thing1 : i have no idea who nancy gray is.this concerns stand your ground,yes