MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – “It was a light drizzle. I’ll never forget the day.”
A decade later and Tracy Martin still remembers February 26, 2012 like it was yesterday.
Ten years have passed since the death of Trayvon Martin, a Miami Gardens teenager who was gunned down by a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford.
His father, Tracy Martin, recounted that Sunday night 10 years ago when his life changed.
He said the night his 17-year-old son was shot, he was out to dinner with a friend and his now-wife, then-girlfriend Brandy Green.
Trayvon, meanwhile, had gone to see a movie and afterward told his father he was going to order pizza and go down to the store about a mile away.
Tracy says he and Green got home late and thought Trayvon was there. It wasn’t until Green woke up around 1 a.m., that she realized Trayvon wasn’t there.
Trayvon’s phone was going to voicemail and his cousin who had been with him earlier that night, said he hadn’t heard from him since dropping him off.
“That’s when the panic actually started,” Martin said.
“We called the hospital,” Martin said. “Nobody had been admitted to the local hospitals under Travyon Martin.”
After making several calls to no avail, he called police to file a missing person’s report. Hours later, the Major Crimes Unit reached out and asked to come to the house and speak with him.
“It started to set in then. Something happened. Something wasn’t right,” Martin said.
Three detectives along with a clergy member arrived at the door.
“I greeted them at the door,” Martin said. “He asked me could I show him a photo of Trayvon. I showed him a photo of Tray.”
The detectives then sat down with Tracy, asking him questions like the last time he saw Trayvon.
“In his folder, he pulled out he said, ‘I’m going to show you a picture and you tell me is this your son?’” Martin remembered. “And so he pulled out the picture and that was the photo of him laying on the ground dead.”
To him, it was unbelievable.
“I was in denial,’ Martin said. “This is my son, and the last conversation we had was that I know in fact, I love him and he loved me and now I am looking at a still photo of his lifeless body on the ground.”
“My world had just crumbled from right up underneath,” Martin said.
Just a year later, Trayvon Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman, was cleared by a jury in 2013. He had said the confrontation between him and Trayvon escalated and the shooting was self-defense. The jury agreed. Just on month ago, a $100 million defamation lawsuit filed by Zimmerman in 2019, was dismissed in Leon County.
What has happened in the time since that night, changed Martin’s life and the life of Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton.
Fulton and Martin began rallying for justice and from his death, spawned the beginnings of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The same year of Trayvon’s death, Fulton started a foundation in his name to stand with parents who have lost their children to gun violence.
“I try to encourage them,” Fulton said. “I try to lift them up. I try to tell them that a brighter day is coming.”
Brighter days, is what Fulton says has happened in the years since. The officers involved in the death of George Floyd in 2020 were charged and convicted. The men who chased down and killed Ahmaud Arbery were also arrested and then convicted.
“I see people being held accountable now where before, they were not being held accountable for taking a person of color’s life,” Fulton said.
Each year, her foundation hosts a peace walk in Miami Gardens with hundreds turning out.
“My son is resting in power,” Fulton told the crowd in early February. “My son is the voice and sometimes the face for so many other Trayvon Martins that you don’t know.”
As his parents reflect on that life-changing night, they both think about who Trayvon would have been. This year, he would have turned 27. His father said, he had dreams of a career in aviation.
“I still have his flight suit and everything,” Martin said.
Fulton said maybe he would have been married with children. She noted he loved children.
“I think about him all the time and when I think about him I ask him, ‘Are you proud of me? Are you proud of your mom?,’ Fulton said, “and I can see him smiling, saying, ‘Yes.’”
Evening report