Something that I’ve noticed that keeps coming up again and again as I talk to people about the Zimmerman case is that Zimmerman started the altercation when he decided to follow Martin. Martin wouldn’t have attacked Zimmerman if he didn’t feel threatened because this guy was obviously following him. This is pretty disturbing to me.
Let’s roll the clock back two years. Naienko and I were meeting some friends at their hotel the day before Dragoncon started. For those that don’t know, Dragoncon is the largest fan-based scifi/fantasy con in the US, and is held every year over Labor Day weekend in downtown Atlanta. It’s spread across 5 hotels, and, as is the case of our friends, many attendees stay in one of the hotels within a few blocks due to the host hotels filling up quickly after accepting reservations. There is a not so great part of town not far away, but the city deploys a lot of police during the convention, so those up to no good tend to stay away that weekend. Of course, like I said, this was the night before and the cops hadn’t been deployed yet.
Anyways, Our friend’s hotel was a few blocks from our hotel. Our hotel was on a fairly major street that has lots of foot traffic well into the night. Their hotel was on a quieter street, and we had to walk a couple blocks down a side street that had pretty much zero foot traffic since there were no store fronts on it.
As we crossed the street from their hotel to make that couple block walk, my danger sense started tingling. I noticed a… umm… “gentlemen” standing in the shadows of a door way looking like he was planning on crossing the street going the opposite way. As we passed him, he quickly turned around, and started following us. If I turned to look his direction, he would slow down and let some distance come between us. He would speed up slightly if I wasn’t obviously looking in his direction. After quickly thinking about my surroundings, I walked sideways with the cement wall of the building next to us to my back. The “gentleman” kept his distance until we were in spitting distance of the crowd on the main street, at which point someone walked by the other way. As the poor soul walked by this “gentleman,” the guy decided that he was an easier mark, turned around, and started following him.
I could be wrong. This person may have just been out for a stroll, he could have thought he forgot something, and then remembered differently, or maybe I was right and he was intending me and my loved one harm for a quick buck. Thankfully, I’ll never know for certain, but I’m pretty sure I know where it fell.
Now… according to many that I’ve talked to or read lately, I had the right to bash this guy’s head into the pavement. I had no doubt in my mind that this man was following me with no good intentions. According to some, the man clearly had it coming. Oddly enough, these are also the same people that generally think that people that feel the need to carry guns are paranoid and violent.
Oh… by the way… the guy that was following me was black. How do you think they would have responded to the news story of a white man bashing a black man’s head in “because he was following me?”