Thursday, April 12, 2012

Justice for Trayvon?

He was a 17 year old black male - he had a hankering for a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea. He went to the local convenience store, having left the "safety" of the gated community in which his mother's fiance resided.

Many stories have been told and retold about what transpired that night in a relatively quiet suburb of Sanford, Florida, but what we do know for sure is that young Trayvon never returned to be with his mother. His father tried valiantly to reach him on his mobile for some three days after the disappearance of Trayvon - why the police did not think to respond to the mobile calls is beyond me. The phone was surely ringing off the hook in the morgue or with Trayvon's belongings somewhere in the Sanford Police Department.

Why George Zimmerman came to the police department after an alleged life threatening altercation sans visible blood on his shirt, or elsewhere for that matter, sans any bruises to his allegedly broken nose, and walking in plastic cuffs quite freely and lucidly - this was surely not the look of a person who had been in a "fight for his life."

The Florida Stand Your Ground is now being challenged in Congress - it is their hope to repeal it - it will then likely (if the NRA has any say) go before the Supreme Court.

Just what did our forefathers have to say about the right to bear arms? I am quite sure that gunning down an unarmed child is not what they had in mind.

I hope that when this indeed comes to trial in Florida, they can move the venue from Sanford - Trayvon deserves that as do his dear parents.