So I think I can post about this now, within limits, because the neighbor that experienced this (I refuse to use the word ‘victim’) has posted about it on NextDoor.
Last Thursday night around 9PM a neighbor of mine experienced an attempted carjacking, just up the street from my house. Two “little shits” stopped their car abruptly as my neighbor was walking home, got out, gave him a spiel about their uncle’s car being stolen, asked him to identify his car, then demanded his keys. Some other person came by and scared them off. Of course they were wearing hoodies and masks. They went squealing rubber down Redfern to the dead end(ish) made a U turn and burned it back out. Luckily no cars or pedestrians were hit.
This comes after an event on Edgehill road, about a block away from the house. Day before Halloween I figured something was going on nearby when I heard the city police helicopter hovering and not moving. I’m trying to the the Halloween music set up on the porch and at first I think nothing of it. Then when I see it’s hovering over a particular spot I try to figure out where and it seems to be 41st, so I think, okay, an accident happened. But no. As I walk around the front yard I get a better view of the streets over there and there are police cars and yellow tape all over that block of Edgehill.
After I saw the police tape taken down I walked over and talked to a few of the people there. Story I got was two cars, one apparently trying to avoid the other. One car’s driver ducks into the neighborhood and on Edgehill turns toward 41st street, only to find the guys pursuing him coming back toward him from 41st street. So he tries to U turn and in the process bangs into a bunch of parked cars, possibly totalling one. The guys in the pursuing car get out, walk over to the other car and one of them fires twice into that car. But apparently they weren’t good enough shots because the target drives away. Then the other two get back into their car and they drive away.
Talking to my neighbors about the attempted carjacking I learn there was an armed robbery at the corner of Redfern and 42nd Street just a day or so previously. The thinking among the neighbors is there is some crew of middle school kids (!) targeting the neighborhood. I’m wondering if there isn’t an adult or a group of adults operating behind the kids.
On Nextdoor there are the usual complaints about crime in the city and By God I’m Leaving This Hell Hole…blah blah woof woof. I was just out for lovely morning coffee walk through the 1950s rows over to the new “Luxury” townhomes and back, and I’m not having it. Brisk autumn sky, colorful trees, everything I could want on a daily basis within a short walk. Everyone does their lawns and gardens in their own way. I meet friendly faces here all the time when I’m out for my morning and afternoon walks. This is a great place to live and I’m not giving it up without a fight.
I’ve ordered new outdoor security cameras for my alarm system, and I’m going to the next Medfield community association meeting and try to get something like either a neighborhood watch or at least more eyes on the streets at night, and maybe more cameras. I hear complaints about the police doing nothing about crime here all the time but they can’t do much if the neighborhood doesn’t give them something to work with.
Maybe don’t call 911 for every little thing that makes you suspicious, but document it. Keep a record of things that strike you as out of place. Maybe it’s nothing, maybe your documentation comes in handy later. Snap some photos if you can without risk. Neighbor across the street from the shooting on Edgehill told me she had security cameras mounted for over a year and just hadn’t bothered to hook them up. Luckily another neighbor had working cameras and gave his video to the police. But…seriously??
People on my street came together over the squatter house, we can do this too. Encourage the “little shits” go somewhere else. This is Our turf.
And anyway…where am I going to live that there’s no crime? Disneyland?
This comparison is worth noting, but I’m sharing this for another reason. In the arguments over gun control, and people (men almost always) who commit acts of violence with guns, I keep seeing this one thing popping out at me: a history of domestic violence or brutality toward women, sometimes children, sometimes animal torture. And also this…look at how the Times phrases it: “…who occasionally unleashed violent acts toward neighbors and women he knew.” It’s like they’re describing a charming little eccentric personality quirk and not a scary indicator of a deeply rooted predatory nature that should have everyone concerned.
The NRA. its constipated culture warriors, its jittery paranoid drunken Ted Nugent following would howl loudly about it but I see an eminently reasonable basis to deny someone the ability to legally buy and own a firearm right there: domestic violence. Of course there would need to be due process, a right to appeal and have your case heard. Fine. But if that’s what you are then the rest of us have more than enough cause to be afraid of what you might do with that gun.
I’m saying this as a gun owner myself, and as someone who believes the right of individual citizens to own their own firearms makes sense in a democracy. Overall gun violence is down. But these mass public shootings are on the rise and, in my judgement, they’re showing a common theme that isn’t necessarily about religious fundamentalism. Background checks won’t prevent all shootings, but if done seriously and diligently they’d be a help. But this also needs to be taken into account: if children can’t trust you, if your lover can’t trust you, then who can? I would say this is even more telling about a person’s potential for violence than a criminal record.
Look at it in the context of the overall mindset toward women, particularly among GOP politicians these days. The shooting at Planned Parenthood and the smear campaign against it are of a piece. You would have to assume, given the number of chest thumping runts now walking the halls of congress and the statehouses, that inconveniencing people at the gun shop, who occasionally unleash violent acts toward neighbors and women, would seem baffling to them at the least, if not an attack on their rights as men. Boys will be boys… The stereotype of the gun owner as having small dick issues is crude and misses it. It’s not their dicks that are small, it’s their hearts. The gun isn’t a dick substitute. The dick is a heart substitute.
Bullies will be bullies. Guns don’t matter. I realize to many that seems an outrageous thing to say but I keep finding it to be true. They say guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Fine. But what kind of people? This ultimately I submit, is precisely why they imposed a funding ban on research into gun violence; because it is exactly what they don’t want science to pin down. They can already see themselves in that mirror. It’s not the gun that makes a person dangerous. It’s the lack of heart that makes a person dangerous. And you really see it in how they treat their spouses, their lovers, children, neighbors. There’s where it tells you that someone is not to be trusted. And maybe not just with a gun either, but also with a seat in congress. There’s the big red warning sign. A criminal background check is not nearly as telling as that is.
Parker noted that he was hustled into a classroom with other students by a professor who asked if anyone was armed. He said he raised his hand and said he would attempt to protect his fellow students if they came under attack.
This was the sane thing to do. Note that he had military training. There’s a discipline that comes with that you just don’t see in the open carry zealots, which is what makes them so scary.
But also note this: it makes a case for not totally banning private citizens from carrying a firearm too. It’s even making me rethink my own knee jerk reaction about having them on a school campus. If this was typical behavior then I don’t think there would be much opposition to concealed carry. And with strict licensing, safety training and background checks I think this would be. This guy had military training. You would expect he could pass all of that handily. But it’s not typical behavior, and that’s the problem.
People with guns don’t worry me as long as there is some reasonable control over it. It’s the stunning lack of control the NRA and others are insisting is their right that worries me. No…being a hazard to others in our public spaces is not your right. They say if you have to get a license to drive why can’t we license gun ownership too. Well I still think people ought to be able to have guns in their homes or on their own property as long as they can pass a background check. But taking one into our public spaces should definitely require a license. And that license should definitely require passing a background check, passing a range safety and accuracy test and passing a test for knowledge of the applicable laws. Something I have a hunch the most vocal of the open carry idiots could not.
And even then, it should be left to the locality to decide what weapons are allowed and where no weapon is allowed. Cities for example, might decide no, you can’t carry Anywhere in a densely packed urban zone because of the danger to bystanders in such close quarters. No, you can’t carry in a subway. No, you can’t carry in a shopping mall. The localities know best where their own danger zones are and how to handle them. And if the argument is high crime zones are exactly where citizens need their means of protection the most, my reply is high crime zones are where civilization is failing and more people with guns sure as hell isn’t the answer to that. There’s a failure of society and government in those neighborhoods that needs to be addressed. Not every problem is a nail.
So here’s a situation where a law abiding man who had a gun on him knew better than to believe everything the NRA and the Ted Nugents of the world keep yapping about how more guns in the hands of citizens would have stopped all the spree killings we’ve suffered recently. But also there was this:
Parker noted that he was hustled into a classroom with other students by a professor who asked if anyone was armed. He said he raised his hand and said he would attempt to protect his fellow students if they came under attack.
This is why I am in favor of gun control, and why I am against outright bans.
But the “crazy” ones always seem to have a respectable counterpart who makes a respectable living pumping out the rhetoric that ends up in the “crazy” one’s manifesto–drawing crosshairs on liberals and calling abortion doctors mass murderers–who, once an atrocity happens, then immediately throws the “crazy” person under the bus for taking their words too seriously, too literally.
This.
I appreciate that freedom of speech is vital to democracy. I appreciate that. But these sorts of crimes don’t happen in a vacuum. And this kid isn’t the only one with blood on his hands. That said, don’t go looking at the obvious hatemongers either. The screamers. The Rush Limbaughs, the Michael Savages, the Ann Coulters, the Fox News Talk Radio gallery of race baiting demagogues. They may be completely sincere in their hatreds, but they have the platforms they do, because someone paid for them.
Someone paid for them.
There’s the problem. Where is the money coming from to give hatemongers a platform to turn this nation into a tinderbox of mutual hatreds? Who is buying that air time, so enough people can be blindly aroused by hate, so republicans can elected, so the advertisers, the corporations, the deep pockets, that fund the hatemongers, get their taxes cut even more, get regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the environment repealed and financial oversight gutted? Follow the money funding the hatemongers, who inflame the passions, arouse the hatred, that finds its way sooner or later, eventually, to a killer, to a bloodbath, to its source. There’s the problem.
Race hatred killed those people. Without a doubt. But it had an assist from greed. Greed that doesn’t particularly care about race. I put it to you, that without that assist, we would not be reading many of the headlines today that we are. I put it to you, that without that calculation in the rarefied atmosphere of the corporate and financial boardrooms, that exacerbating divisions between Americans, and thereby to break apart the New Deal coalition, was preferable to accepting a world where their right to rake in tons of cash by any means they cared to rake it in might have some limits placed upon it, we might have made real tangible progress toward healing the race wounds of our nation. But it was not to be. Race hatred killed those people. But it was fed, it was kept alive, by greed.
ISLA VISTA, Calif. — A deadly attack by a gunman obsessed by grievances toward women near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has touched off an anguished conversation here and on social media about the ways women are perceived sexually and the violence against them.
Years ago, when I was still making a living as a freelance architectural model maker, I worked often for a firm located in a business park located between Rockville and Gaithersburg, two big and growing suburban cities in the massive Montgomery County Maryland sprawl. I had no car at the time but the Metro subway had a stop I could get off at and walk to the firm’s offices easily, if I cut across the King Farm.
Anyone who grew up in the Rockville area in those days will remember the King Farm. Developers ate it some years ago and now it’s all ugly rowhouses, condos, parking decks and a faux town center. Back then it was this wonderful anomaly of wide open green space tucked between a growing busy sprawl. It was so huge that at night, it created its own dark sky. I used to love working late at the firm’s offices and then walking in the dead of night down a little access road that cut across the King Farm to the Metro on the other side of Route 355. There were little worker’s shacks off to one side of the road…four of them I think…and the main farm house and barns not too far from them. You could feel the history of the place. And the sky above was bright with all the stars you never saw at night in the city.
One day while working on a model, I was talking with the architect, a young Turkish woman who designed one of the most beautiful art deco buildings in Silver Spring. This one…
She asked me how I managed to get around without a car and I told her how I did it, and then went off on a tangent about how beautiful the sky was at night over the King Farm, and how lovely it was to walk down that little road at night at the end of the day…just you and the stars and the quiet, peaceful night…
…and she looked at me sadly and said, “I could never do that.”
Not necessarily. George says he didn’t have his gun on his person. His (ex) lawyer says he did, but he didn’t pull it out and wave it around. I think there’s room here for another fairly obvious possibility.
Florida can prosecute George Zimmerman even if his wife doesn’t press charge
Sure could. Just like the last time they prosecuted him. I’ll bet he’s quaking in his boots at the prospect. They’re birds of a feather with that resentful angry thug and you don’t seriously want your soul brother going to jail just because he waved a gun at his spouse, or killed an unarmed kid who’d just gone out for some snacks.
Now that Zimmerman has a legitimate reason to fear for his life, the threshold for what constitutes a personal threat has got to feel awfully low. What about an unarmed person wearing a t-shirt with George Zimmerman’s face in crosshairs who sees him on the street and swears at him? Could Zimmerman shoot him? Trayvon Martin was unarmed and was wearing a plain sweatshirt. What about a group of protesters shouting hostile messages about him as Zimmerman happens to walk by? Based on the jury’s handling of the Trayvon Martin case, it seems Florida law would allow Zimmerman to pull out his gun and, if he continued to feel threatened by these people for whatever reason, shoot them all in good standing under the law.
You thought the gun made you somebody and it didn’t after all, did it George. You had to chose, as everyone who puts a gun, or any other sort of weapon in their hand, has to choose, between the rule of law and the law of the gun…and you chose the gun…because you thought that made you somebody…and now the gun owns you George…it owns you…
“If I was doing you a favor I’d let them hang you now and get it all over with. But I don’t want you to get off that light. I want you to go on being a big tough gunny. I want you to see what it means to have to live like a big tough gunny. So don’t thank me yet partner. You’ll see what it means.”
The facts show that George Zimmerman armed himself with a gun loaded with hollow point bullets and ended up killing an unarmed teenager who was just out buying some snacks. How that happened is disputed but to me it’s obvious that when you strap on a gun, go looking for trouble and end up stalking and killing an unarmed 17 year old, you’ve done something wrong.
Digby goes on to say “To me, the carrying of that gun morally requires that he be held liable in some way for the unarmed Trayvon’s death”, but there is where I often part company with my fellow liberals on the issue of guns: I am fine with the concept that you have a right to own a gun and defend yourself with it. In fact, I consider that right to be a fundamentally democratic thing.
What isn’t are things like vigilantism and racism. These are poison. They are poison to the person, they are poison to the nation. This case is positively dripping with racism that nobody in the corporate news media wants to look closely at, because we’re all supposed to be beyond all that now. Except we’re not. Zimmerman’s suspicion and fear of Martin only makes sense in the context of Martin’s race, his sex, and his age. There is literally nothing else there but those three things. Zimmerman stalked that kid because of those three things, and his rational for killing an unarmed teenage boy who was out buying snacks can only seem plausible due to those three things. Fear the black male, and especially, fear the young black male. Look, for as long as you can stomach it, at the breathless agreement that Martin posed a threat to Zimmerman’s life, solely on the basis of Zimmerman’s say-so, and the ephemeral signs of a fight on his face and head. That was no beating. You want to see what a beating looks like, look at the photos of recent victims of gay bashers. But it’s simply an accepted fact in certain quarters of the country that Zimmerman’s life was threatened. Were Martin white it would not matter what the race of his stalker would be, other than if his stalker was a black man he’d already have been convicted and on Florida’s death row. Picture it: a white teenaged boy stalked by a strange man, fights back and is found shot to death. Would anyone doubt the adult male had done something horribly wrong? Why is it never considered, that Martin was standing His ground when Zimmerman confronted him? Well, of course a young black male has no such right. Racism was always at the rotten core of this.
But if Zimmerman was a racist, he was also a vigilante and if you approve of vigilantism anywhere outside the pages of a comic book you are no friend of civilization let alone democracy. All those people waving around the second amendment as a defense against tyranny are no defenders of democracy…if anything they are the useful tools of anarchy. The gun is what you need when the the peace is broken, so the first thing, the basic responsibility of the believers in civilization and democracy is to preserve the peace. That means the rule of law and the ballot box as the agent of change. Peaceful disobedience, where the conscience requires disobedience, and responsibility for ones own conduct toward your neighbors. Responsibility. What a concept, that. Zimmerman acted like the gun came with a badge and they don’t. But more than that, he acted as if he had character enough to bear the wearing of a badge and it’s sickeningly obvious he is no such person.
However this trial turns out, if nothing else this case really raises a lot of questions about the kind of nation we are, or should want to be. So many virtuous moral all-American values types cheering on what Zimmerman did. It’s been a while since I’ve been this completely disgusted. Digby’s right, what would be a just punishment for what Zimmerman did isn’t obvious, but what is staringly obvious is that he did something terribly, horribly wrong. A teenage boy went out for snacks and never came back home, because Zimmerman saw a young black man somewhere he thought a young black man didn’t belong, and took that matter into his own hands.
For a technologically advanced country as wealthy and capable as this one is, we are an astonishingly violent country. Whenever one of these mass killings happens I keep finding myself forlornly wishing we could have an honest national conversation about why. But we won’t. Already it’s instantly turning into yet another argument about guns and then it’s all just flag waving and static and nobody is listening anymore, except to themselves.
I wish we could have a conversation about violence. And in particular, about male violence. I honestly don’t think the image of the sex driven violence prone human male is accurate. I think it’s a careless stereotype. I think, like the way it can be with certain dogs, you beat it into males one way or another. You annihilate their capacity for sympathy, kill their ability to trust and love, and what is left, that all too human capacity for aggression and hate, well you just let it take root and grow, uninhibited. You beat the heart out of a boy, one way or another, and then you fill the void with hate…and it doesn’t matter who they hate, just that they hate, and that they are afraid not to hate.
From the bully culture in grade schools, to the pulpit thumpers who preach male supremacy over women, to the militaristic warrior culture that reaches from the pentagon to Wall Street, teaching a kind of human law of the jungle, dominate or be dominated, we systematically dehumanize our male citizens. Some days I look at what school kids have to go through, at the casual acceptance by our courts of male domestic violence, at the routine business-as-usual culture of predatory capitalism, at a conservative politics that claims letting working citizens to perish of sickness and disease is the highest kind of social morality, and I wonder that we aren’t even more violent than we already are.
I wish we could have this conversation. But no. We will have another bitter pointless argument about guns, and wash, rinse, repeat, until the next time some walking time bomb goes off and kills. And then we’ll do it all over again. And the bullies will still rule the school hallways, young men will still be fed the idea that their manhood depends on dominating women, predators in business suits will still raid and loot the life savings of working people and be exalted as job creators, preachers will still preach that god hates atheists, liberals and homosexuals and that god made man to rule over women, and politicians will win votes by promising to take food out of the mouths of poor people and be regarded as statesmen in their hometown newspapers. And we will go to bed some nights when the news is horrifying, wondering why oh why can’t Americans look at one another and see a neighbor whose life is worth cherishing too.
Yes It Was A Tragedy. More Specifically Though, It Was A Murder.
I saw the story of that Kansas City Chiefs murder/suicide fly across my Google news page, and reading the coverage I kept thinking, over and over I am not kidding, what about his girlfriend…?
The way that story is being covered, that taken-for-granted focus on the football player and the invisibility of the woman he killed, disgusts me. I read three news stories and I don’t even know the name of the woman he killed. But I know about the man who killed her in detail. Oh, such a tragedy, he was such a tremendous athlete, he had followed his dreams to the NFL…one of the stories I read ended on that note…and so on. But…wait a minute…he killed his lover and his child’s mother. Whatever his dreams were, honor and decency didn’t seem to be a part of them. And what of the woman he killed…what of her dreams?
I’m not saying the people close to this aren’t thinking of her…his team members, his coaches…they probably knew her personally. But…what of the news media? The way they’re reporting this so far as I’ve seen it is pretty disgusting.
That particular kind of crime completely sickens me, and I don’t understand the reflex I see sometimes to feel sorry for the killer too. How on earth do you lay a hand in anger on the body of the one you have laid down with? Yes, yes…I know lovers quarrel all the time and that’s just human nature. And I know what it is to be dumped, and there is nothing in the world that hurts like it. Nothing. But to strike…let alone murder…it just boggles my mind how you cross that threshold.
If love is gone within you, never mind the other, then walk away from it man. It can’t hurt so much because you’re still in love, if you’re swinging at them too. If you still loved them the hands that once caressed that body simply would not strike that body. You just couldn’t do it. So just walk away from it man, because that isn’t a broken heart it’s a wounded ego you’ve got, and if that’s all it takes to make you kill then what did you let yourself become. Go away and think about that while you’ve still got a soul worth having.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has done yeoman’s work on tracking violent groups, notes that “Currently, there are 1,018 known hate groups operating across the country, including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others. And their numbers are growing.” The Center’s data show that hate groups have increased by 69 percent in the last decade. And the so-called “Patriot” groups have increased nearly 800 percent since Obama became president.
If the news media and political leaders were told there were a thousand violence-prone Muslim groups operating in the United States, can you imagine the reaction? Yet, apart from the glancing attention given incidents like the Sikh temple massacre, the national discourse about terrorism focuses almost exclusively on Muslims.
The same goes if they were white and on the radical left.
I remember immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, nearly everyone figured Arab terrorists were responsible. Then it turned out a right wing lunatic did it. Right wing lunatics have continued to kill people in this country ever since and yet when the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a report on anti-government right wing violence it was denounced by the republicans as a political attack. As if the republican strategy of tearing the country apart for political advantage hasn’t itself been a political attack on the country they keep claiming to patriotically love.
The United States of America is fantastically more violent then any other industrialized nation and the tragedy is every time a domestic terrorist attack happens any hope of talking about why that is so quickly devolves into an argument about guns. Guns don’t matter. What matters is how much hatred there is now between Americans. What matters is one of the two major American political parties has for decades actively sought to incite that hatred for political gain. They have courted the racist vote. They have courted the misogynist vote. They have courted the votes of religious bigots, xenophobes and homophobes. And that has had consequences.
But we can’t talk about them. We can talk about how our enemies hate us, but we can’t talk about how we hate each other. Because that would be a politically motivated attack on the people who have made tearing the country apart in order to get the bigger half their election strategy for decades. For some reason that is a wrong thing.
Writing fiction is hard. Writing good believable human dialog is very hard. You have to have an ear for listening. I sat in a jury box once, on a case where the accused was charged with a very horrible series of crimes against an individual. One of the places where the prosecution lost me was when the alleged victim testified their attacker said something to them and it sounded more like bad dialog from a low budget crime movie then anything anyone would actually say in the middle of a violent kidnapping and robbery. I’m not saying I’m the world’s greatest listener, and you can’t always tell when somebody is making things up, but I suspect that for most of us it’s pretty obvious when someone is trying to invent dialog, write a scene as it were, and they’re no damn good at it.
You will die tonight. You will die tonight. You will die tonight. Yeah. Right George. Maybe it’s God’s will that you can’t shut the fuck up like your lawyer probably wants you to if he’s any damn good.
And Just Who Exactly Are You Hiding From Mr. Zimmerman? No…It Isn’t Black People…
So Zimmerman is out of touch. Nobody could have predicted this obviously. Here’s my two cents: What I have been seeing, admittedly from a distance and in second third and forth hand telling, is a man who is fundamentally stupid in some ways, has anger problems, but is remarkably quick witted.
Consider: if he shot that kid after he had him down on the ground and the kid was crying out for help, and then told the first witness on the scene that he was the one crying for help, that says a lot. A very disturbing lot. Stupid people can still be very quick witted like that. Especially if they’ve had a lot of practice at it. My hunch is he’s been good up until now at getting away with things. And this time his lack of internal brakes finally took him into a very bad place and he’s out of his depth and now he’s afraid.
This is what I see…from a distance…second, third and forth hand…take it for what it’s worth: He was never hiding from black anger. He knew what he did that day. He knew. It’s been replaying in an infinite loop over and over again in his thoughts. What he did. What could happen to him if people find out. The public posturing is that he is afraid of black revenge. No. He has been in hiding all this time from the law. It isn’t black anger he’s afraid of. It’s the Florida gas chamber. Remote as that possibility may be in actuality, because let’s face it, the kid was black and this is Florida, it’s been looming over him ever since he pulled the trigger. Pulled the trigger on a teenaged boy who was crying desperately for anyone to come help. He knows what he did that night.
This sudden escape…his attorneys backing out…I’m guessing there is evidence out there that is terrifying him right now and that these lawyers just don’t want their names remembered in what is to come.
[Update…] I’m reading now that Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey may charge Zimmerman as early as today. This is interesting:
Corey has indicated in recent weeks that she might not need a grand jury to bring charges against Zimmerman.
My hunch here since Zimmerman’s lawyers announced they lost contact with him has been that there is evidence out there that he hoped or trusted the Standford police would simply ignore once he claimed a “stand your ground” defense. Then the shooting of Trayvon Martin became national news and that evidence is still out there and it is terrifying him. I think Corey saying she did not need a grand jury to press charges is indicative that she has that evidence. Of course I could be spectacularly wrong about all of this. Like everyone else in the nation (except Zimmerman and Corey) I know what I know many steps removed from the actual evidence. But this seems to fit. Also this from Zimmerman’s former lawyers:
Lawyers Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig on Tuesday expressed concern about Zimmerman’s emotional and physical well-being, saying he has taken actions without consulting them. They also said they do not know where Zimmerman is.
“You can stop looking in Florida,” Uhrig told reporters. “Look much further away than that.”
At a guess…he’s no longer in the country. His father is a retired judge. Be interesting to know if Zimmerman’s former lawyers had any talks with the father before they bailed.
[Update…] I’m reading now that in Florida you can’t charge someone with first degree murder without a grand jury indictment. So whatever Corey has, or thinks she does, it seems it’s not enough for that.
Thing is…she would know what a high hurtle she is facing because of “stand your ground.” If it’s not a serious charge with evidence to back it up then it may as well be no charge at all.
[Update…] He’s in custody so I hear, which means he didn’t flee so far after all. Why is lawyers lost contact with him and one of them said “look much further away” beats me. But he has a new lawyer who I’m hearing was calling “stand your ground” a license to murder just a few days ago. But a good lawyer defends their client regardless of personal belief or they don’t take that client on. Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder, which as I understand it in Florida is you didn’t plan it, but you did it deliberately nonetheless. I’ve heard nothing so far about the evidence she has.
I’m wondering what the autopsy showed. I keep hearing that Trayvon Martin was found face down on the grass. The witnesses say they saw, unclearly, two figures, one on top of the other and then there was a shot. One witness, who was later “corrected” by the police says she saw Zimmerman on top and then heard two shots. So did the autopsy show that Martin was shot in the back? Was the bullet found? Was it in the ground below Martin or somewhere else? Did Corey spend all this time knowing the evidence at least supported second degree murder but trying to find evidence to support first degree murder and she decided she could not successfully prove that much?
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