Bryan Creason

Entertainment Editor

   On February 26th, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old high school student, was found shot and killed in Sanford, Florida. According to the Sanford police report, George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood sheriff, was standing over Trayvon’s body holding a handgun when authorities arrived on the scene. He also reportedly had a bloody nose and a wound in the back of his head. Zimmerman told the police he killed Martin in self-defense. The police, believing Zimmerman’s account, let him go after initially arresting him and taking him to the police station but without administering a drug or alcohol test or running a background check.

    Since then, the nation has been watching this story unfold. New details come to light everyday, such as Trayvon’s last telephone call. According to Martin’s girlfriend, says the Associate Press, she was on the phone with Martin when Zimmerman began following him. She said she instructed Martin to run when she heard sounds of a scuffle just before the line went dead.

    At the heart of the matter is a Florida law known as “Stand Your Ground,” which states that a citizen who uses deadly force is immune from prosecution when they believe such force is necessary to prevent injury or death. Supporters of the law say that “Stand Your Ground” doesn’t apply in this case because Zimmerman reportedly pursued the African-American teen. Regardless opponents of the law say it encourages vigilantism.

    Lawyers from Trayvon Martin’s family have recently acquired a new eyewitness and apparently leaked footage from the police station on the night of the shooting, according to guardian.co.uk. The witness claims he saw Zimmerman walk away from the scene without blood on him and the leaked footage also shows an unscathed Zimmerman. This seems to poke some holes in Zimmerman’s self-defense claims, but Zimmerman’s family has already responded. Zimmerman’s brother, Robert Zimmerman, said this in a CNN interview:

“You return force with force when somebody assaults you. George was out of breath, he was barely conscious. There would have been George dead if he had not acted decisively and instantaneously in that moment when he was being disarmed.”

A grand jury is supposed to convene on April 10th to decide Zimmerman’s fate and a special investigator has been assigned to the case.