A teenager on the phone with an unarmed black teen shot and killed by a neighbourhood watch captain asked the boy to run and heard the confrontation, telephone logs reveal.
“He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man,” the 16-year-old friend of Trayvon Martin said, according to logs obtained and released by ABC News on Tuesday.
“I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run, but he said he was not going to run.”
Martin, 17, did run, but the man returned and cornered him.
“Trayvon said, 'What, are you following me for,' and the man said, 'What are you doing here.' Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell. I called him again and he didn't answer the phone.”
Following escalating protests, the U.S. Justice Department announced late Monday it will investigate the Feb. 26 shooting.
An online petition at Change.org had collected more than a half-million signatures by Tuesday morning, with new names added every few seconds from around the world, including Canada.
George Zimmerman, 28, claims he shot Martin last month in self-defence during a confrontation in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. Police have described Zimmerman as white; his family says he is Hispanic and not racist.
Zimmerman spotted Martin as he was patrolling his neighbourhood on a rainy evening and called the police emergency dispatcher to report a suspicious person.
When Zimmerman said he was going after the person, the dispatcher said, “We don’t need you to do that.” Zimmerman followed Martin, who was walking home from a convenience store with a bag of Skittles candy in his pocket.
In one of the police calls immediately after the confrontation, a woman pleads for police help as a voice screams for help in the background. The woman describes another gunshot and the screaming stops.
