Murder charge is filed in killing of Trayvon Martin

Prosecutor Angela Corey announces a second-degree
murder charge against George Zimmerman. (Gary W.
Green, Orlando Sentinel / April 11, 2012)

George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times

April 11, 2012, 5:25 p.m.

SANFORD, Fla. — For weeks, protesters around the nation have demanded the arrest of George Zimmerman.

A Florida special prosecutor made that happen Wednesday. She announced that Zimmerman — the neighborhood watch volunteer who admitted to fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager on a rainy night here in February — had turned himself in and would be charged with second-degree murder in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

"We did not come to this decision lightly," said Florida State Atty. Angela Corey at a news conference in Jacksonville.

Alluding to the intense publicity surrounding the case, she added, "Let me emphasize that we do not prosecute by public pressure or by petition."

Corey declined to discuss the details of the investigation that led her office to charge Zimmerman, who had claimed self-defense — and who had been free, though in hiding, for weeks. Nor would she say where he was being held, "for his safety as well as for everyone else's safety."  READ MORE