Trayvon, eager to get out of the house and into a new place with new friends, agreed.
On the night of February 21, a Tuesday, my youngest brother, Mark, and I drove Trayvon to the Greyhound bus station so he could catch the five-hour, multiple-stop ride from Miami to Orlando, the nearest stop to Sanford, where Brandy would pick him up and take him to her townhouse in nearby Sanford. Trayvon had his cellphone with the earbuds, as always, in his ears. He was wearing a new pair of basketball shoes, khaki pants, sweatshirt, and his gray hoodie.
“I love you, see you later,” I said, kissing him goodbye.
“Love you, too, Mom,” he said as he exited the car and disappeared into the bus station.
We were almost back home when my cellphone rang.
“I missed the bus,” Trayvon said.
“What?”
He gave me some story about how he walked away from the station for a moment and when he came back the bus to Orlando was gone.
“Do you not want to go?” I asked.
No, no, he said, he wanted to go.
“Can you come back and get me?” he asked.
I was frustrated that he’d missed the bus. What did he have to do other than wait for the bus to come? But I didn’t say anything to him about it. I just turned the car around and drove back to get him. Since there wasn’t another bus to Orlando that night, we drove him back home. By ten P.M. we were fast asleep, and by seven A.M. we were up and sitting around the breakfast table.
As always, I had to get to work. So after breakfast I drove Trayvon to Tracy’s house, and Tracy took him back to the Greyhound station.
That was Wednesday, February 22, 2012. After I said a quick goodbye to Trayvon at his father’s house, I rushed off to work, still feeling a low vibration of anxiety about how Trayvon’s journey would go, whether he and Tracy would get a chance to talk, whether Trayvon would return to school on Monday with his head on straight, like he’d promised me he would, ready to shake off these setbacks and move forward with his studies and his dreams, all the things we’d talked so much about. I had no idea that would be the last time I would ever see my son alive.
Five days later, I got the call from Tracy.
“Trayvon,” he began, his voice breaking, “is gone.”
CHAPTER 2
Tracy
February 26, 2012–February 27, 2012
Sometimes, I still see him, running across the public park football field, his shoulder pads too big for his slim frame, but his spirit large enough to make up the difference. The Optimists football club would retire his jersey—number 9—but one team wears it on the back of their helmets, as a reminder of the friend and teammate they lost. I still go to that field all the time—I run the Optimists football program as a volunteer. And while I know it’s not my son, I see Trayvon running across that field again in every kid there. I think of them all as my sons, and my responsibility to them goes beyond football. I’m there to help them, guide them, and do my best to make sure that what happened to Trayvon won’t happen to them.
I sometimes wonder, What if? What if Trayvon hadn’t been killed? What would he have become? But those questions are pointless, unanswerable. All I can do now is remember all that he was to me, the son I considered my best friend.
“I love you,” I told Trayvon on the day that he died.
He had called me to ask for the phone number for the local pizza delivery service.
“Do you have enough money for pizza?” I asked him, just to make sure that Trayvon and Chad had money left over from what I had given him earlier.
“Yes, we’ve got enough,” he told me.
“I love you, Tray,” I remember saying.
I always make it my business to tell my kids or my significant other “Hey, I love you” whenever we’re going to be apart.
It gives me some comfort to know that the last words I said to him before he died were “I love you.” And that his last words to me were “Dad, I love you, too.”
I was born in Miami but raised in East St. Louis, Illinois. The Mississippi River separates East St. Louis, Illinois, from St. Louis, Missouri, and although the two cities are separated by less than a mile, they are many worlds apart. I grew up in the Roosevelt Homes projects on Forty-fourth Street and Bunkum Road. The first thing that was instilled in me was to be patient, careful, and respectful to everyone I met, not just because it was the right thing to do, but because it could be the difference between life and death. The sound of gunshots was as common as the sound of car horns on those streets, and the neighborhood was a hot spot for gangs. So you had to respect the people, the territory you were in, and the constant potential for violence.
Coming from where I did, the sight of a dead body, or a crime scene, was hardly news—until one day it was my son whose body was surrounded by the yellow police investigation tape. I’ve known death before—both of my parents are deceased, I’ve had friends shot and killed, relatives who passed away young from accidents and disease. This was all part of growing up in East St. Louis. But even then, nothing compares to the loss of a child. It’s a different level of hurt than anything I’ve known, a hurt that sears your mind, body, and soul, that never subsides.
—
My father’s side of the family lived in Miami, so I often visited when I was young. But my heart was set on staying with my mother and my family in East St. Louis, where I was the youngest of four boys.
East St. Louis is a small city, almost 99 percent black, and surrounded by predominantly white suburbs. So there were certain areas where we knew we couldn’t go. I’ve been called “nigger” by people in passing cars as I walked along the roads of East St. Louis, and I remember seeing handwritten signs saying “No Niggers Allowed.” Some people argue that racism goes both ways, that it affects everyone, and maybe that’s true. However, African Americans are more often on the receiving end of it, and black boys catch the majority of its hell. When I became a parent, I would tell my sons, “Hey, racism is alive and well, and you have to watch out for it all of the time.” While the subject of racism is a conversation that America struggles to have, we as African Americans have to have the conversation all the time.
My mother always advised her kids, “If you see somebody coming at you with any kind of racism, run.”
I remembered my mother’s advice when I was around fourteen. While I was walking with some friends, a car full of white young men passed by. They threw bottles at us and called us niggers. We kept walking. The next thing you know we saw that same car coming back, and my mother’s words came back to me in a hurry.
Run. And that’s what we did.
So just like my mother told me, I told my kids, including Trayvon: “If you see yourself about to get into a racial confrontation, eliminate yourself from the equation.”
Run, because the confrontation isn’t worth it.
Run, because the confrontation may escalate.
Don’t stop to discuss it. This is NOT the time to have a conversation about race. If you have to protect yourself, do so. But if you can, just run.
Why run? My mother was from the South, so she knew what racists were capable of—racial terrorism was still going strong when she was growing up in the civil rights era. For her, running from racists—back when the racists you were running from might be law enforcement, civic leaders, or even elected officials—made all the sense in the world. As for me, I was raised in all-black East St. Louis, an island of poverty and violence surrounded by affluent white suburbs. Racial tensions ran high. No matter what progress had been made, there was no changing how some people felt about us.
And while we didn’t have to worry about the Klan in East St. Louis, I knew good and well that if there was a racial confrontation, no matter the right and wrong of it, the black person involved would be saddled with a presumption of guilt. Running made sense to me, too.
A generation later, I had to give my sons the same instructions my mother gave me. Progress is sometimes hard to find. And it
was better for them to be aware, so they could protect themselves and extract themselves from the situation simply by running from it.
—
I’m a truck driver now, which might not sound like a dream job, but even as a kid I was always fascinated by truck driving, and sports, especially basketball. My friends and I always said that basketball was going to take us out of the ghetto, and I was pretty good at it. I wanted to play in college, but my grades weren’t up to par. So I started focusing on work at a very young age, never even considering a college education.
I passed through a variety of jobs, but I really didn’t have any goals set at the time. I got into some trouble at a young age, hustling to get some money in a place where money was hard to find, being young and hungry and angry all at once. I wasted years. I knew I had to look for a different way of life.
My oldest brother, Willie “Mike” Williams, was driving a truck for Miami-Dade County Solid Waste Management in Miami and convinced me to leave East St. Louis. It was a hard decision, but in March 1993, I made a permanent move to Miami. The day I arrived in Miami, my brother Stephen Martin took me job hunting. And that’s how I landed my first Miami job, working at Glass Carving Enterprises, as a laborer in their glass factory warehouse. Within the year, I was promoted to driving a truck, delivering glass across South Florida. I’d finally found some stability.
In the years that followed, my focus was on work and playing amateur softball, something that I’d grown passionate about while living in sunny Florida. Then one day Mike invited me to come along with him to the annual Miami-Dade County Solid Waste Management Christmas party. It was December 1993.
The party was in a hall. Mike was introducing me to a lot of the people he worked with when we saw Sybrina and some of her friends. The first time I saw her, she was wearing blue jeans and a denim vest with a purple heart embroidered on it. Mike introduced us. We spoke to each other for a while, and then she told me that she had a career with the county and didn’t have any interest in a young unemployed man with no goals.
Meaning me.
I assured her that not only was I employed but I had goals and dreams of becoming a family man. Later that night we exchanged phone numbers, and a few weeks later we went on a date.
One day I invited her on a date, and drove her out to Miami Beach. I had an engagement ring in my pocket, and there, on a stretch of sand, I got down on one knee and said, “Will you marry me?”
It wasn’t elaborate, but it was sincere.
And she said yes.
We were married on June 11, 1994, and moved into a two-bedroom apartment in what is now known as Miami Gardens, a Miami suburb. We weren’t rich, but that was our castle. It was me, Sybrina, and Jahvaris, who was two when we met and who I raised as my own child. Then came my pride and joy, Trayvon.
I cut the umbilical cord and was the first to hold him. We were bound from the start—me, Sybrina, Jahvaris, and baby Trayvon—from the moment he came home from the hospital. He was an active baby, and almost from the time he was born, he was crawling—and bawling—trying to come after me. Every time I opened the door, he wanted to go, he wanted to move. “Outside,” he would say as soon as he learned to speak. It may have been his first word. He just loved going outside. Playing in the dirt, rocks, whatever he could find. Adventurous. Friendly, and not afraid of anything.
I don’t think he ever used the bassinet we bought for him. People gravitated to him. “Oh, he’s so cute,” they would say, picking him up and loving him. He was my joy.
We were blessed. Everyday people, yes. Not rich, ever, but rich with love. For five years, we lived together as a family, but as time went by Sybrina and I found ourselves on separate paths. Back then, Sybrina was a homebody—she was tightly focused on her education and her job and her kids. Meanwhile, I had started playing softball more seriously, traveling to amateur tournaments across Florida and nearby states with my team. We were playing three or four nights a week in the Miami area and going for tournaments some weekends, all of which put a strain on our marriage. The kids used to call me “Disneyland Dad” because when I was at home it was always a party, an event, a celebration. I didn’t care much for sitting still; I had so much love for my kids. They were everything to me.
I gave everything to my kids; I didn’t give my all to my marriage, and it eventually came to an end. I moved out, meaning out of the house, not out of the family.
Sybrina was the custodial parent, and the kids primarily lived with her, but Trayvon still spent as much time as he could with me—we let the kids share their time between us however they wanted. Whichever house they were in, they knew they were always welcome and deeply loved.
—
One day when Trayvon was nine, we headed home after he finished one of his youth football games in the park. “Do you want something to eat?” I asked as we drove home. No, he said, he was too tired. When I got him home, I put some oil in a pan on the stove to fry some wings and French fries. But while the oil was heating up, Trayvon and I lay down in the bedroom and both of us fell asleep. I woke up to the smell of smoke. I ran to the kitchen and threw a towel over the burning pan to try to smother the fire, but grease splattered all over me, leaving third-degree burns on my lower extremities.
I screamed out, “Trayvon!”
Then I blacked out.
Trayvon woke up and came running into the kitchen. He dragged me out of that burning kitchen. If he hadn’t awakened, we might have both been dead. My son saved my life. And on the night of February 26, 2012, I wish I could’ve saved his.
—
As time went on, I found out from Sybrina that Trayvon was having trouble at school. We sat down and discussed ways of correcting the issues. I have to admit, I was worried, not about losing my child to the streets, but seeing the son we had raised become a young adult and forgetting about the values that we instilled in him. As soon as we found out about his suspension, we confronted Trayvon—something he didn’t look forward to because he knew how strict we were about certain things. But the truth is I never thought Trayvon had gone astray. His life wasn’t out of control; he wasn’t a bad kid. He was a teenager, and teenagers sometimes do unexpected things—that wasn’t an excuse, but a reality I tried to keep in mind, to keep from overinterpreting his growing pains as something darker. Still, this was an important moment to intervene, to make sure he stayed focused on his goals and dreams. I knew all too well what could happen when a young life gets derailed.
He was in his junior year, and we encouraged him to focus on getting past the suspension and finishing up strong so he could go into his senior year with high expectations, ready to tackle the challenges ahead. We wanted so much for him to follow the same path as Jahvaris, who was already doing well in college.
“Recognize the mistakes you have made, and let’s correct them,” I told him. “We know you’re not a bad kid. We know you’re not going down a bad path. But we’re going to cut off the things that are detrimental to your future. We’re going to get things right.”
—
I was planning to drive up to Sanford that weekend to visit my girlfriend, Brandy Green, and I knew from his previous trips that Trayvon liked visiting her in Sanford, so I decided to take him with me. I thought it would be good to get him away from whatever distractions he was experiencing as a teenager.
The plan was for him to go up a couple of days early, on Tuesday, so he could spend some time with Brandy and her son, Chad—he regarded Trayvon as an older brother. I would drive up on Friday to join them when I got off from work.
“Give yourself a little ‘me’ time,” I told Trayvon when I dropped him off at the Greyhound station that Wednesday. “Think about what you are going to do when you go back to school next week.”
“Okay, Dad,” he said and turned to go into the bus station. I watched him walk away and felt that, even with this struggle, things were going to be okay.
—
I’d first met Brandy Green two years earl
ier at a convention we were both attending for a Masonic organization whose mission was “dedicated to a unifying understanding of God and the betterment of humanity.” On the weekend of February 24, 2012, two years later, we were returning to the same convention in Orlando.
Brandy worked as a juvenile detention officer in Orlando, supervising kids in trouble between the ages of eleven and eighteen—kids locked up for fighting, drugs, probation violations, prostitution, disobeying court orders, and other infractions. Some of the kids grew up without a mom or dad. They were kids without supervision or guidance, looking for love and acceptance in the wrong places.
Brandy knew troubled kids, and she knew that Trayvon wasn’t one of them.
When he arrived in Orlando on the Greyhound bus, Brandy was waiting for him in front of the station.
“You hungry?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer: Trayvon was always hungry.
They drove to Flyers Wings & Grill in West Orlando for the jumbo 25-wing special: wings, fries, a soda, the works. After lunch, they drove to Brandy’s home at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a three-bedroom, one-car-garage townhouse. The Retreat would be familiar to anyone who’s spent time in southern or central Florida: it was a classic Florida subdivision, right off the interstate that led straight to Orlando. It was a secluded and sunny place to live.
By the time Trayvon hopped on that bus to Sanford, the Retreat had suffered from foreclosures, and along with the foreclosures, burglaries. The community had reportedly been burglarized eight times the year before, enough for the residents to establish a neighborhood watch, with volunteer, unarmed security guards patrolling the area. Their mandate was to call the police if they saw any suspicious activity.
Even though I usually visited Brandy in her Sanford townhouse about twice a month, I didn’t know anything about any of that at the time. And neither did Brandy, for that matter. She worked in Orlando from 2:00 to 10:30 P.M., on a different schedule from her neighbors. She and her son kept to themselves and never knew that there had been burglaries in the neighborhood, much less a neighborhood crime watch. Brandy loved living in the Retreat. It was quiet. Gated. Peaceful. Kids playing outside. She never even noticed the foreclosures, never saw a burglar.
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