George Zimmerman was a 28 year-old volunteer neighborhood watcher in Florida who shot and killed 17-year old Trayvon Martin on 26 February 2012, launching a media brouhaha that ignited arguments over gun laws and racial profiling.
The incident itself achieved little notice at the time. Zimmerman was a security-conscious resident of an Orlando, Florida suburb. He was an unofficial neighborhood watchdog, with a history of calling the local police force to report what he considered suspicious behavior. On a Sunday evening in February, Zimmerman spotted Martin, who was walking home from a neighborhood convenience store. Zimmerman called the police and was told he didn't need to pursue Martin.
A short time later, some kind of altercation led to Zimmerman using his pistol to kill Martin. The story became national news a month later, after Martin's parents hired an attorney and went public with the question: "why wasn't Zimmerman arrested?" Local police cited Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law as justification for letting Zimmerman walk, but a more vocal group suggested that Zimmerman had racial motives for pursuing Martin, who was black, and that further investigation was justified.
A widely-publicized photo of the racially-mixed Zimmerman only muddied the waters (his father is of European descent, and his mother is of Peruvian descent). A national debate ensued, detached from what few facts were known about the case. Florida authorities launched an investigation and appointed a special prosecutor, and in late April of 2012 Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder.
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