Thread: Unarmed black teenager was shot by neighbourhood watch volunteer

The records show that less than ten minutes passed from Zimmerman’s first sighting of Trayvon, to Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon as they wrestled in a neighborhood walkway between houses. Where possible, I’ve included the times of events down to the second, but some events and phone calls were only recorded by the minute, making some guess work necessary.

Timeline of Events

7.04pm: Trayvon receives a call from “DeeDee,” a minor female that has been reported as his girlfriend. He is using a headset, walking home on his way back from the store after grabbing a snack and a drink, and he has been on the phone with DeeDee since he left there. According to DeeDee, it begins to rain, and he takes shelter at one of the buildings in the townhouse complex, while the two continue to chat. The referenced building is possibly the awning marked in purple on the above image. DeeDee ends her phone call with Trayvon before 7:09pm, but will then call him back a couple minutes later.

7;09;34 pm: Zimmerman, in his truck, spots Trayvon. He calls the non-emergency dispatch number for the police, and the call log [PDF] records his call as connecting with dispatch at 7;09;4pm. [Note: Relevant log begins on page 46.] He reports a suspicious black male in neighborhood. An recording of Zimmerman’s police call can be found here. Zimmerman states “The best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle.” Zimmerman meant to say 1111 Retreat View Circle. It appears that Trayvon is around the clubhouse when Zimmerman’s call to police begins, at the intersection of Retreat View and Twin Trees. This is consistent with DeeDee’s claims that Trayvon was hanging out under a complex building to take shelter from the rain.

7;10;16pm: Forty-five seconds after the phone call begins, Zimmerman reports that Trayvon is “here now,” indicating possibly that Trayvon was moving while Zimmerman was not. It’s possible Zimmerman’s car was parked at all times during his phone call to the police.

Zimmerman: “He’s here now … he’s just staring.”
7;10;20pm: Zimmerman’s phone call to police indicates that at this time, Trayvon becomes aware of the fact that Zimmerman is watching him. The two stare at one another, and Trayvon keeps walking.

Zimmerman: “Now he’s staring at me.”
7;1;22 – 7;10;35 pm:

Dispatch: “OK, you said that’s 1111 Retreat View or 111?”
Zimmerman: “That’s the clubhouse.”
Dispatch: “He’s near the clubhouse now?”
Zimmerman: “Yeah, now he’s coming toward me. He’s got his hands in his waist band.”
It seems almost certain that Zimmerman was on Twin Trees Ln. at this point, since Trayvon’s path started at the clubhouse at the intersection of Retreat View and Twin Trees, and was heading towards the cut-through (circled in blue, above). It seems plausible that Zimmerman has been sitting in his parked truck, somewhere at the area marked in green in the image below, for the entire first half of his call to police. While watching from his truck, he sees Trayvon leaving the awning (marked in purple) and walking towards the cut-through, which means Trayvon’s path would’ve gone right past the car. Trayvon apparently noticed Zimmerman as he approaches, and keeps on walking.

This possible scenario, however, doesn’t completely fit with the timing from the call with DeeDee, which seems to indicate that Trayvon felt that he was being followed by someone at a time that would seem to be before Zimmerman exits the car — implying that Zimmerman may have been slowly following Trayvon while driving. My guess, though, is that the time stamps for T-Mobile’s call records and for the 911 logs are slightly off from one another, which explains any discrepancy between the two time lines.

7;11;14 pm: At this point, Trayvon appears to have walked past Zimmerman truck, possibly heading towards the cut through, where he would shortly be out of sight of Zimmerman.

Zimmerman: “These assholes. They always get away. … When you come to the clubhouse, you come straight in and you go left. Actually, you would go past the clubhouse.”
Dispatcher: “OK, so it’s on the left hand side of the clubhouse?”
Zimmerman: “Yeah. You go in straight through the entrance and then you would go left. You go straight in, don’t turn and make a left.
7;11;42 – 7;11;48pm: There is the sound of a car door opening at this point, immediately after Zimmerman says “he’s running,” and Zimmerman starts huffing; wind noises can be heard, and Zimmerman sounds slightly breathless. Zimmerman is able to see Trayvon plainly enough at this point to determine his direction, and believes he is going for the back entrance:

Zimmerman: ”Shit, he’s running.”
Dispatcher: ”He’s running? Which way is he running?”
Zimmerman: ”Down toward the other [back] entrance of the neighborhood.”
The house where Trayvon is staying is directly between Trayvon’s approximate location at this time and the back entrance to the complex; Trayvon is probably actually running for his house. However, because both the house and the back entrance are to the southeast corner, there are two possible routes that Zimmerman could have seen Trayvon take off towards: (1) Trayvon stays on Twin Trees Ln., bolting south down the road; or (2) Trayvon runs for the cut-through, heading east, so that he can then turn and head south either on Retreat View or through the sidewalk between the rows of houses. Because Zimmerman’s reaction to Trayvon running is to get out of his car, it seems that scenario 2 is more likely — Zimmerman can’t follow in his car, he has to go on foot.

Approx. 7;12pm [+ or - 30 seconds off of 7:12pm, from the time as recorded by Zimmerman's call to police. Exact time unknown]: DeeDee makes another call to Trayvon. He answers, and DeeDee reports that he says to her, “I think this dude is following me.” She says that she tells him “Run!” and that Trayvon responded that he’s not going to run, he’s just going to walk fast.

The timing is close enough to suggest, but not perfect enough to say for sure, that when Zimmerman reports that “[Trayvon's] running,” it’s at the same time as when DeeDee advised him to do just that. If so, it’s possible Trayvon was not telling the complete truth when he told her was just going to “walk fast,” perhaps to seem braver, but in reality had started running. Alternatively, Trayvon really did only start to “walk fast,” but Zimmerman, clearly worried about yet another asshole getting away, interprets this as “running” in his call to dispatch.

7'12;08 pm: After conversation about Zimmerman’s contact details, Zimmerman states to the dispatcher, “he ran.” From the general context, it seems that Zimmerman has now lost sight of Trayvon. The running/wind noises on the recording also cease abruptly at this point, and Zimmerman’s voice evens out. If this is the case, then Zimmerman has stopped his on-foot, running pursuit of Trayvon approximately 20 seconds after he began.

7;12;44pm:

Dispatcher: “Alright, where are you going to meet with [police] at?”
Zimmerman: “Um, if they come in through the gate, tell them to go straight past the clubhouse and, uh, straight past the clubhouse and make a left and then go past the mailboxes you’ll see my truck.”
I’m unclear where the mailboxes Zimmerman refers to are, but it appears from Google street view that they could be in the awning that Trayvon’s girlfriend says he took shelter in from the rain. If so, however, it’s hard to understand why police would “make a left and then go past the mailboxes.” But it makes more sense than anything else I can find, so it’s possible Zimmerman just misspoke again.

7;12;59: Zimmerman states that his truck is parked at “a cut-through” so he doesn’t know the address. The cut-through is the blue-circled area in the image, so Zimmerman’s truck is presumably in the vicinity of the green circled area. It may have been parked here from the very beginning of his call to police.

7;13;14pm: Zimmerman has lost Trayvon. He doesn’t want to say his address out loud because “I don’t know where this kid is.” Nine seconds later, Zimmerman tells dispatcher to have police call him when they arrive rather than meet at specific place, indicating that Zimmerman plans to keep moving, and doesn’t know where exactly he’ll be when police arrive.

7;13;41pm: Zimmerman’s phone call with dispatch ends.

7.14pm: There is approximately a one minute, thirty second period for which we have very little information about what occurred, from.around 17;14;00 until 17;15;30. Zimmerman apparently keeps searching for Trayvon during this time period, and phone records show that Trayvon is still on the phone with DeeDee. Also during this period of time, neither party moves particularly far from their estimated locations at 7;13;00pm; it appears that they were either (1) walking extremely slowly, (2) had stopped somewhere before resuming movement, or (3) were taking non-direct paths. It’s possible that Trayvon, like Zimmerman when he refused to give his house number out, was worried about the stalker following him home and figuring out where he lived, so Trayvon did not run straight back, instead feinting one way before looping back around. Another possibility is that Trayvon, thinking he’d lost Zimmerman, was dawdling on his walk back home in order to finish his phone call with DeeDee — possibly because Trayvon, like most 17 year olds, generally prefers to have his phone calls with his significant other out of ear shot of his parents. The other two possibilities are that (1) Trayvon bolted on a pathway in the wrong direction from his house, in order to escape Zimmerman, after Trayvon initially started running/walked fast; he was then making his way back to his correct route when he encountered Zimmerman again; or (2) Trayvon, still on the phone with DeeDee, had in fact managed to start running on a direct path towards home, but decides to loop back to find Zimmerman again, in order to start a fight with the guy who dared to follow him.

Some small, extremely circumstantial evidence to suggest why Zimmerman may have been expecting Trayvon to run out the back entrance, and why Zimmerman may have tried to cut Trayvon off from going in that direction, comes from the police call logs. We know from Zimmerman’s previous calls to police that he had on at least two prior occasions called in to report that suspicious black males were hanging around the “back entrance” of the housing complex. (See pgs. 39-40 of the police dispatch logs.) On both those occasions, as with the call he made about Trayvon, Zimmerman stated that he believed the person he was watching had committed recent break ins in the neighborhood. On the two prior occasions, Zimmerman reported that the suspicious persons were at or headings towards the back entrance, and on one occasion, Zimmerman advised dispatch that the “subjects will run into the subdivision next to this complex,” and advised that law enforcement enter through the back entrance to meet him. It seems possible that if Zimmerman was going to follow Trayvon and lost him, his assumption would be Trayvon would be heading in that direction.

Approx. 7;15;30 – 7;15;45pm: Zimmerman and Trayvon encounter each other for the final time, in the area circled in red in the diagram above. At this point, all evidence from eye witnesses and police reports indicates that a fight between the two began and ended there, and that the parties did not substantially change position during the course of the struggle. Reports on the exact location of Trayvon’s body have varied, but it has been established it was somewhere in the grass in the row between the houses, closer to the north side than the south. For purposes of establishing how far and in which direction the fight may have migrated during the course of the encounter, it would be interesting to know where Trayvon’s headset was found (as well as the skittles and iced tea bottle!), but so far I have not seen any reliable reports about its location.

7.15 – 7.16pm, DeeDee’s version of events: Trayvon tells DeeDee that he thinks he has lost the dude that was following him. DeeDee then hears voices, as if Trayvon and his pursuer have run into each other again. She says something like the following exchanged occurred between the two individuals:

Trayvon: “Why are you following me?”
Zimmerman: “What are you doing here?”
At that point, it sounds to DeeDee as if one party shoves the other. DeeDee thinks she hears Trayvon’s headset fall off, and the phone call cuts out at approximately 7:16pm, four minutes after it starts. It is my suspicion that the T-Mobile records are about 30 seconds slower than the time kept by the police dispatch’s clock– which would mean that the phone call started at 7;11;30, and ended at 7;15;30 pm.

Further analysis of events:
Minute-by-Minute Timeline of Trayvon Martin’s Death | The View From LL2

Originally Posted by guyinthailand

Ent, did you bother listening to the video OhOh posted (above and below)? Don't you have anything to say about what Professor Dershowitz is saying? He says there's no way 2nd degree murder can come of this, and probably not manslaughter, either. And he accuses the prosecutor of a crime.

Your long meandering posts are irrelevant to the case and to the issues Dershowitz discusses. ("apparently" this, "circumstantial" that, "he said she said" "as if")

I think your long posts about timelines, etc are evidence of your denial of what's going down.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Interesting video/interview with someone who actually knows a little about US law.

Dershowitz: Prosecutor in Trayvon Martin case overreached with murder charge | Fox News

I wasn't replying to Ohoh's post, simply posting an article that I read, and I think that you ought to read it in it's entirety.
I have read Dershowitz's comments and theory in the article.

The Dershowitz comments are an argument proposing the invalidity of SA Corby's affidavit for prosecution.

His argument may be refuted on the grounds that his reference to the "bloody photographs", that he cited as a point against her application, were not even published at the time in question. They did not exist in the public knowledge for SA Corby to consider.

Thus his argument is void of fact to pertinent reason in his postulation that SA Corby perjured herself in establishing just cause for prosecution against Zimmerman.

Dershowitz is fishing.

Zimmerman’s lawyer: Donations to website totaled $200,000

The defense lawyer for George Zimmerman said Thursday night that his client had received about $200,000 through donations to his website.

Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, near Orlando, fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin of Miami Gardens on Feb. 26, after confronting the teen, whom he believed to be suspicious. Trayvon was not armed.

Sanford police cited Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law in not initially charging Zimmerman with killing Trayvon. Angela Corey, a special prosecutor appointed by Gov. Rick Scott, earlier this month charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder.

Thursday night, Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that at first he had been told that Zimmerman had two accounts: one with $700, another with about $2,000.

But while trying to shut down all of Zimmerman’s Internet presence, his client asked him what to do with his PayPal accounts.

Days before Corey filed her charges, a website called TheRealGeorgeZimmerman.com sprang up. The website, since removed, said visitors could use a PayPal link to donate money to Zimmerman.

O’Mara told Cooper that the account contained $200,000 and $204,000.

Asked by Cooper whether a higher bond might have been set for Zimmerman if that amount had been known, O’Mara said “maybe.” He added that he would let the court know officially about the money.

But, O’Mara added, that he’s not sure that Zimmerman even realized the money was available to him. After Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester set bond at $150,000, it was Zimmerman’s family who cobbled together the money for his release.

O’Mara said he does intend to create a legal defense fund for Zimmerman, and has already received checks from people who want to help.

His client will need the money. O’Mara estimated his legal expenses could add up to $1 million.

“You can really go through a lot of money on a case like this,” he said.

guyinthailand, did you?: Zimmerman's lawyer: Donations to website totaled $200,000 - Trayvon Martin - MiamiHerald.com

That's a lot of loot to have hanging aound "unknown" by Zimmerman and O'Mara.
If O'Mara was half competent he would have kept track of everything pertaining to the case.

He was quick to jump on Zimmerman's ex-lawyers and their references to their former client, but was able to be conveniently "unaware" of the money in Zimmerman's appeal fund.

Zimmerman would have known the money was there, but didn't disclose the fact when bail was applied for, which is in fact why it was set at a very low $150,000, because he claimed that he was unemployed, had no income, neither did his family.
This was not the case, as he was holding close to a quarter of a million dollars in loose cash!

Slippery chap, this O'Mara.
So is Zimmerman.

Unfortunately the ramifications of this trial, as some have accepted, will not stop at the jury's determination. The media and the prosecution have whipped this story way above it's real place.

They will both fully exploit the events, for financial or career status, which will unfold after the trial and should be held accountable now before it grows larger.

But hey, c'est la vie.

You are surely not implying that the prosecutor decided to charge without reading the medical reports of both the victim and the suspect.

If she didn't read the reports how did she know the victim was dead? she obviously, to me anyway, read a report stating, as a fact, that a body with a bullet hole had been found. But not a report on the suspect stating, as a fact, and maybe photographed, of head wounds?

Or maybe she decided to prosecute based on TV news reports

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Zimmerman’s lawyer: Donations to website totaled $200,000

guyinthailand, did you?:

Now why would I want to donate any money to someone the media, Spike Lee, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the New Black Panthers have already presumed is guilty because he is not black?

Yeah, I think I'll donate to Spike Lee so he has enough mobile phone minutes to keep tweeting Zimmerman's address so the lynch mob can find him.

Or, I could donate to the New Black Panthers so they can increase their reward to anyone who can be the first to lynch Zimmerman.

This is totally unfair. A black man in America could never raise $200K+ just by shooting an unarmed 17-year-old white boy.

My thoughts run pretty much parallel to John Cole's:
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Wingnut Welfare is the Shit
The story is over whether he deceived the judge by claiming he had no money, thus getting himself really low bail, when he actually had 200k in his paypal account. Talk about that if you want, but what I find shocking is that there are enough sociopaths out there that would donate 200 grand to a killer.

Shoot a black kid, set up a blog, make a quarter million. Our society is sick.
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The only thing I don't get is why Cole finds that "shocking." He lives in West Va., which I would have expected in itself would expose one to level of racism at least approximate to that found on, for example, this thread, albeit maybe not quite as concentrated.