I’m not sure how much time had passed. My memories from that day are still gray. All I can remember is that I was still in the parking lot, sitting in my car, when Tracy called me back.
He said the police had come over to the house and shown him a picture.
“What kind of picture?” I asked.
Tracy was talking, but I could barely understand what he was saying.
“Trayvon gone. Trayvon gone,” he kept repeating. “Trayvon is gone.”
“Gone?” I said. “Gone where?”
“Somebody killed him,” said Tracy. “He was shot and he’s gone. Dead. Murdered.”
“No!”
I couldn’t allow myself to believe it.
“Did you see the body?” I asked.
“No, the police showed me a picture,” Tracy said. “They’re still here now.”
He said that the picture showed Trayvon dead on the ground, shot through the heart.
I cut him off. “That’s not him,” I said. “That’s not Trayvon.”
“Yes,” Tracy repeated. “I saw the picture.”
“That’s not him,” I said. “You go see the body. You go see the body physically to make sure that that is him.”
My heart couldn’t allow my mind to believe what Tracy was telling me. I couldn’t accept any of it. Not shot, not murdered, not dead. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it; I was numb with disbelief. I went into denial. It hadn’t happened, couldn’t have happened, would never have happened. Even though Tracy kept telling me that it was true.
“What did they say happened?” I remember asking at some point, though I was still far from accepting any of what Tracy was telling me.
“Trayvon hid behind this building and this guy was following him,” he said.
“Did they arrest this man?” I asked him.
“No, not yet.”
And we hung up.
—
I immediately made two calls, one to my mom and one to my sister. I wasn’t crying. It hadn’t really hit me yet. I was lost in a swirl of confusion, not allowing myself to believe what Tracy had just told me, but feeling like I needed to tell my family what he said. I called my mom first. I seemed to be on autopilot. I remember dialing her number and repeating to her what Tracy had told me.
“Tracy called and said Trayvon was…” I stammered. Then let it out. “He said somebody shot and killed Trayvon.”
“What?!” my mom screamed.
“Tracy said somebody shot and killed Trayvon!”
“Are you sure?” she said.
“That’s what Tracy told me,” I said.
Next, I called my sister and told her the same thing.
“Tracy called and said Trayvon has been shot and killed!”
And she said exactly the same thing as my mother.
“No!” she said. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what Tracy told me,” I said again, although I still didn’t allow myself to believe it.
“I’ll meet you at your house,” my sister said.
I started the car. I drove out of the parking lot. I pulled onto the I-95 expressway, going over everything I’d been told. I still wasn’t crying, because I still didn’t believe it. It’s not Trayvon, it’s not Trayvon, it’s not Trayvon, I kept repeating as a prayer, in the hope that it might come true. I was driving north on the expressway, heading toward home. Still not a tear. I passed the exit for Miami Beach. I kept going over what Tracy had said.
Okay, he didn’t come home, I thought. Maybe something did happen. Now the reality was starting to sink in. I kept replaying Tracy’s words over and over again. Oh, my God. Did he say that Trayvon had been shot? Did he say Trayvon had been killed? Did he say Trayvon had been murdered? Was he talking about my son? My baby?
And then, in the middle of traffic on I-95, it hit me like a punch to the stomach.
It was true.
I put on my right turn signal and pulled over onto the shoulder, right before the exit for NW Sixty-second Street/Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard. I stopped the car and put on my hazard lights.
And there, on the side of the highway, with hundreds of cars whizzing by, with the roar of the traffic all around me, with my baby dead on the ground from God-knows-what, I broke down. I cried. I wailed. And, finally, I screamed out to God.
NO!
“Why?” I screamed out. “Why, why did this happen to him! Why did you let this happen to him! Why, why, why, why, WHY?!”
The truth had taken the breath and the life out of me. A darkness descended and everything ached: my head, my chest, my heart. Especially my heart. Everything hurt. I had never experienced the piercing pain I felt in that moment, a hurt so deep it made me think my heart was going to come flying out of my body and explode in midair. It was true. Trayvon was gone. And I was in a very dark place.
—
Finally, my questions to God about why turned into asking God for help in getting through it. I don’t recall how long I stayed on the side of that expressway. It might have been thirty minutes; it could have been an hour or two. I lost all sense of time. Cars were flying by. I couldn’t see them, hear them, care about them. Because of my tears. I cried some more and I prayed some more and I cried some more and I screamed some more and pleaded with God for help some more.
Please give me strength, God. Please help me, God. Please, please, please, please, please…
Finally, I pulled myself together. I still had sense enough to know that I couldn’t stay on the shoulder of that expressway forever. I wiped the tears off my face, and I waited. I waited and waited and waited until I felt like I’d gotten myself together, at least enough to continue the drive home. I started the car and resumed my drive home. All I remember of that moment was that it was hot and my whole body was wet with sweat and tears.
When I pulled into the driveway at home, my mom and sister were outside waiting for me. I remember Tracy calling again to make sure I got home okay. Then more calls from friends and family. Calls and calls and calls and calls.
I couldn’t focus on any of that. With that one call, my whole life had been destroyed. My peaceful existence was over. I desperately wanted to see my baby and couldn’t let myself believe that he might really be gone. So I went into my bedroom and lay down on the bed, and I didn’t come out for the rest of the day, hoping, praying that when I awoke it would have all been a bad dream and that Trayvon would be safe and smiling in our home again.
CHAPTER 4
Tracy
February 27, 2012–March 8, 2012
The police took off and left me with the photo of Trayvon lying dead on the ground. I was distraught but also desperate for answers. How could this have happened? And what happened? I walked outside of the townhouse and went around the back, about eighty yards, to the spot where the police said my son had died. It was a typical suburban setting: a communal grassy backyard to dozens of townhouses, with a paved walkway running through it.
The detective told me that he and the two officers with him would return later to do what they called a “walk-through,” reenacting the “altercation,” at this very spot where it happened. He asked me not to come outside while they were doing the walk-through because the person who had shot my son would be there. For some reason, I agreed. Instead of letting emotions run high, I decided that I would leave the house and get away from the scene when the police came with the gunman, thinking at the time, Let the police investigate. Let justice take its course.
But there was nothing stopping me from visiting the crime scene before they arrived. So I walked outside, my face still streaked with tears, and I saw…nothing. Not one sign that anything had ever happened. The crime-scene tape, if there had ever been any, had been taken up. The evidence had supposedly been gathered, along with Trayvon’s body. The sidewalk was clean. There wasn’t a single sign that anything had happened at that place a few hours earlier. It was like the shooting had never happened.
As I was standing there bewildered by how quic
kly they had erased any sign of my son’s death, a television reporter walked up with a small crew.
“Have you heard about the shooting last night?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “That was my son.” And I began to cry again.
We had a brief conversation, and then I began knocking on doors.
“I’m the father of the kid who was shot last night,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Most said they didn’t see anything, only heard the gunshot. And then they quickly shut the door.
My sense of hopelessness and despair deepened. Already I could tell: no one seemed to care about a seventeen-year-old kid shot dead in Sanford, Florida.
On Wednesday, February 29, two days later, the shooting of Trayvon Martin had received forty-one seconds of television coverage on Fox affiliate Channel 35 in Orlando, and the local newspapers gave it brief mention, buried deep in the paper.
BOY, 17, SHOT TO DEATH IN SANFORD DURING “ALTERCATION,” POLICE SAY, read the headline of the Orlando Sentinel, the first and only paper to report the shooting that Wednesday.
—
At the medical examiner’s office, Trayvon’s body was listed as a John Doe.
Young black male.
Identity unknown.
The body was off-limits to me. It was stored at the Volusia County medical examiner’s office, thirty-three miles away from Sanford. Sanford is in Seminole County, and the county has its own medical examiner’s office, right in Sanford. I wondered why they would send Trayvon’s body to another county. No one would explain it to me. When I called the medical examiner’s office in Volusia County, I was told they didn’t allow visitation, even for next of kin.
So I wasn’t able to see my son’s body.
Why?
Why wasn’t I able to see my son? What had they done to my baby?
It was now forty-eight hours since my son’s death. Sybrina had insisted that I see the body to be one hundred percent certain that it was Trayvon who had been shot and killed. But I was turned away from seeing the body, much less collecting it. I was determined not to leave Sanford until his body was released and my son was headed home, to Miami, for his final rest.
His clothes and belongings—everything from twenty-two dollars in his pants pocket to the bag of candy in his hoodie to his earbuds and his cellphone—were bagged as evidence and held by the Sanford Police Department. But his body was stuck in Volusia County and would be until the Sanford Police Department sent a letter, along with the crime-scene photo, positively identifying the body as Trayvon Martin.
For two days, the body, along with questions over why my son was shot, lay in limbo.
On the morning of Tuesday, February 28, not knowing what to do or who else to contact, I decided to go to the Sanford Police Department.
I was still in shock. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t speak. Brandy drove me to the police station. It was morning. I don’t remember the exact time. No one took notice of me, a six-foot-three, 200-pound black man walking into a police station in sweatpants, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a baseball cap, with Brandy at my side.
“Good morning, I’m Tracy Martin,” I told the receptionist, asking to see Detective Chris Serino.
She called someone upstairs and soon Detective Serino arrived, again wearing a white button-down shirt and loosened tie, and guided us to a conference room.
All I knew at this point was that there had been an altercation and that Trayvon had been shot and killed. Now, in the conference room, the detective elaborated on what had happened on the night of February 26, 2012.
He told me that Trayvon was walking back from the 7-Eleven when the altercation occurred.
I asked the detective who killed Trayvon.
He said the man’s name, George Zimmerman, but I will refer to him from this point forward as who he is: the killer. He was a twenty-eight-year-old volunteer neighborhood watch coordinator at the Retreat at Twin Lakes. He was also a student at Seminole State College working on a degree in criminal justice, the detective told me, adding that the killer had never been arrested for anything in his life. “This guy is squeaky-clean,” the detective told me.
Detective Serino then told me the killer’s version of the altercation: He was sitting in his vehicle, behind tinted windows. Trayvon was walking along the sidewalk, coming back from the 7-Eleven. The killer began tailing Trayvon in his car. Trayvon turned and walked up to the killer’s car and asked, “Why are you following me?” The killer rolled down his window and said, “I’m not following you.” Trayvon then supposedly asked him, “Do you have a problem?” And the killer replied, “I don’t have a problem.”
Trayvon began running. The killer got out of his truck, and came around one of the buildings. Trayvon walked up to him again and said, according to the detective, “What’s your problem, homes?”
“I don’t have a problem,” said the killer.
“You’ve got a problem now,” Trayvon allegedly said. At which point, the killer put his hand in his pocket to retrieve his cellphone, and, the detective said, Trayvon sucker-punched the twenty-eight-year-old, knocking him to the ground. And here the detective said my seventeen-year-old son began beating the neighborhood watch coordinator, covering his mouth with his hand and telling him, “Shut the fuck up,” while pounding his head onto the sidewalk pavement.
While they were struggling on the ground, the killer grabbed his pistol and shot Trayvon once through the chest.
According to the detective, after Trayvon was shot he put his hands out and said, “You got me, homes.”
It sounded like something out of a bad movie. And it didn’t sound anything at all like my son. I told the detective that Trayvon wouldn’t just walk up to a stranger’s car out of the blue and ask, “Do you have a problem?” That was the first thing I questioned. Knowing my son, he wouldn’t just go up and confront, much less attack, a stranger.
“Have you arrested this man?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “We’re interviewing him.”
He added that the killer had a license to carry a gun.
“Did you do a background check on my son?” I asked, remembering what the detective had told me about the killer having a “squeaky-clean” record.
“Yes,” he replied, and Trayvon’s juvenile record was, of course, clean.
“Just because this guy has a squeaky-clean background and a license to carry a gun, does that give him the right to kill my son?” I asked.
“Sir, it certainly does not give him that right,” said Detective Serino. He added that he was a father, too, and he told me that he didn’t believe the killer’s story. “I want to interview him again and catch him in a lie,” he said.
The story didn’t make sense, but at that point I was focused on getting my son’s body released so we could get him back to Miami for the funeral.
I asked Detective Serino if he would contact the Volusia County medical examiner’s office so I could arrange to transport Trayvon back to Miami.
He said he would do his best to help get the body released. Then the detective led Brandy and me into a cubicle. “I have something I want you to listen to,” he said, and he began setting up some audio files on his computer. I had no idea what he was about to play for me, which turned out to be parts—short snippets—of the 911 tapes of several neighbors who called the police to report that two men were involved in a fight at the Retreat at Twin Lakes on the evening of February 26.
“Brace yourself,” the detective told Brandy and me. “You’ll hear screams. You’ll hear the shot.”
Then he hit PLAY.
The calls were to report the altercation, and you could hear it still going on in the background on the tapes.
The sound was, at times, fuzzy. Still, listening to those tapes was horrifying. I was actually listening to my son being shot and killed.
The detective played a few seconds of one tape, a few seconds of another tape.
“This one has some screams on it,�
� he said. We leaned in closer. Again, there was a lot of commotion on the tape, but you could clearly hear what I knew were death screams, the last moments of Trayvon’s life. These screams still haunt me and are impossible for me to describe. I heard a shriek, a howl. I thought it sounded like the word “Help!” It was followed by the sound of a gunshot, the single, fatal shot that took the life out of my son.
“Was this your son screaming?” the detective asked me when the tape went silent.
I was shaken up, in a daze, as anyone would be after hearing the screams and the shot that led to the death of their child. I shook my head like, Man, I don’t know. Later, the detective would say I shook my head and said, “No,” meaning it wasn’t my son screaming, meaning the screams came from the killer. At that moment, however, I couldn’t tell for sure who was screaming, and, hearing those screams for the first time, I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t ask him to play the tapes over again so I could identify which screams were Trayvon’s and which belonged to the man who shot him.
“I don’t want to hear it anymore,” I said.
Detective Serino assured me that he would do everything that he could to arrest the man who killed my son, and said that he wanted to “interview him again and catch him in a lie.”
—
More bad news followed. Not only would there not be an arrest of the man who shot my son, I would soon learn that the Sanford Police Department allowed Trayvon’s killer to walk out of the police station and go home to his bed while Trayvon’s body remained at the Volusia County medical examiner’s office.
I felt helpless, powerless, facing a situation I just couldn’t understand. My son was dead. The man who shot him walked free. And no one seemed to be doing anything about it.
I didn’t know where to turn. Three days after the shooting, I was still in Sanford. Still trying to get my son’s body released. I was expressing my frustration to my brother Steve, and he said, “Give Patricia a call.” He was referring to Patricia Jones. She’s a lawyer, now a legal adviser for the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but back then she was an assistant public defender, working with people who couldn’t afford to hire private attorneys. She’d once worked as a criminal defense attorney.
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