Trayvon Martin: Teen’s death 10 years later changes nation

Demonstrators march in Sanford, Florida in 2012 demanding justice in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. (Gary W. Green/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) Trayvon Martin’s final night began with a convenience store run and ended in confrontation with a neighborhood watch volunteer, leaving the 17-year-old dead on the street.The killing of this baby-faced, hoodie-wearing, unarmed youth still reverberates 10 years later — in protest, in partisanship, in racial reckoning and reactionary response, in social justice and social media."We’re the Trayvon Martin generation, we are the people who were moved into action because of it," said Nailah Summers-Polite, co-director of Dream Defenders, an organization founded in Florida after Martin’s death.RELATED: Trayvon Martin remembered on what would have been his 25th birthdayMartin was visiting his father in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, a suburb of Orlando, on Feb.

26, 2012. On the way back from the store, he was eyed by George Zimmerman, then 28, a member of the community’s neighborhood watch.The initial police report said Zimmerman called authorities to report a suspicious person.

Then, armed with a gun, Zimmerman got out of his car.‘RELATED: Friday marks 9 years since the shooting death of Trayvon MartinIn the confrontation that followed, Zimmerman would tell authorities, Martin attacked him, forcing him to use his gun to save himself.

Zimmerman was allowed to go free.Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, questioned whether their son had been profiled as "suspicious" merely because he was Black.