I don't think the fact that Trayvon initially ran off indicates that he was necessarily scared. See we may have a limited amount of direct physical evidence of what happened but we do have enough to know a couple of things for sure, without relying on what GZ said at all.
- We do know that based on the distances and times involved, if Trayvon had been purely interested in getting away from this guy, and getting home, he would've been
long gone.
- We do know that he was definitely on top of Zimmerman at one point, and the duration of screams, the fact that, as Serino points out, only one voice (GZ's) is heard in those screams, indicate that this moment in time John saw was most likely representative of the whole fight. We have injuries, screams, and the fact that a gunshot even ended up happening strongly indicating to us that this was a one sided beating.
Now back to what GZ said... he says that TM initially heads down that path, then back tracks, and returns to circle GZ's car. This seems an odd thing to fabricate completely out of whole cloth, and so I tend to think at the very least it can be agreed that something like this happened.
If TM was well onto the dog path and turned around once, it becomes easier to believe he turned around again. Again these are not the actions of an innocent person who's a bit freaked out by some guy watching him, and just wants to get out of the situation.
No big completely turnaround in behavior is evidenced in either party.
GZ spent the entire event in a mindset of
observation and TM appears to have spent the entire event behaving in a
suspicious, shady fashion. But if TM didn't care for being watched and sized up for exactly what he was (delinquent, criminal) how was he going to dole out some retribution if the guy was safely locked inside of a car, and not only that but out on a well lit street? He couldn't.
And how was he going to end up with a good story for DeDe and his friends back in Miami Gardens about how he laid some punk out for dissin' him if he just continued home? Nothing cool about that.
If you've listened to DeDe's entire deposition you will agree that this is an
incredibly stupid, vapid girl. The very epitome of what is wrong with today's youth... shallow, spoiled, careless and completely disrespectful of adults. I think it would be entirely within keeping with her mindset and personality to tell Trayvon
"who this fool think he is? beat this fool ass"
and according to the tweets made not only by TM's cousin in the days immediately following the shooting, but other twitter friends as well... beating GZ's ass was entirely in keeping with TM's character.
To paraphrase and summarize, his cousin who he had been slapboxing with the night before the shooting, fully embraced the realization that TM was shot for beating this guy up. Of course he didn't agree that was the appropriate response... but he didn't for a moment doubt that's what had happened. This is someone who knew him extremely well.
He also said basically "well what do you expect?" as in, that's the natural thing Trayvon would do in that situation.
He also refers to GZ as a "cracka" and it's amusing to me to consider whether we might have heard about it if GZ or a close relative/friend of his had tweeted about Trayvon using the N word or any variant of it. I'm not saying cracka packs as much punch, at all, I'm just amused by the complete and total pass blacks get for any and all racism.
and final point, GZ says he was making his way to the far side where Retreat View was the street again, beyond the 2 rows of homes which create the dog path between them. That's where he says he was going for an address.
But no you're probably right, I'm sure this 28 year old with a house, wife, car, about to finish school and on his way to Target for some groceries saw a black kid and thought
"the groceries can wait, I'm killing me a kewn tonight!"
There are NO eye witness accounts of Martin on Zimmerman beating him. They exist only in your head, please get help.
So if John came to police now and said
"y'know, come to think of it... I didn't see anything okay? Nothing at all. I don't want to testify, I never saw anyone on top of anyone alright?" would that suddenly mean there was no eyewitness testimony of TM on top of GZ?
If John had initially said GZ was on top of TM instead, and that GZ was attempting to subdue TM... I'm sure you would totally be cool with him backtracking that and switching to uncertainty and you'd just act exactly like it had never been said. Right?