It’s easy to understand the outcry for injustice after George Zimmerman walked away without a judicial scratch from shooting and killing Trayvon Martin, who probably dies simply for being born with the wrong skin color and wearing the wrong clothes on a day Zimmerman was out patrolling the neighborhood. As expected, the outcry through social media came with responses from celebrities, including athletes from the NBA and the NFL.
Roddy White of the Atlanta Falcons probably made the most controversial of tweets, which he later retracted from, at least from the severity of it. He first said All them jurors should go home tonight and kill themselves for letting a grown man get away with killing a kid, and changed that to I understand my tweet last nite was extreme. I never meant for the people to do that. I was shocked and upset about the verdict. I am sorry.
White wasn’t along in disbelief. Dwyane Wade reacted with Wow!!! Stunned!!! Saddened as a father!!! Some1 make sense of this verdict for me right now please!!! Don’t worry I’ll wait…, and Shaquille O’Neal kept it short and simple with George Zimmerman not guilty can u believe that. Wow.
The most interesting tweets probably came from Nazr Mohammed, James Harrison and Stevie Johnson.
The NBA center tweeted Dont know what the appropriate punishment is but this sets an ugly precedence. Gotta feeling were gonna see more cases like this. #profiling. Harrison responded with Think I’ll go pick a fight and get my ass kicked then pull my gun and kill somebody and see if I can get away…. Johnson compared this to dog fighting and Michael Vick – Living in a world where you fight dogs; you could lose everything (Mike Vick).. If you kill a black man you’re not guilty! #INjusticeSystem.
There was also an overflow of requests to respond without violence to the verdict. Jonathan Vilma tweeted I get if you’re mad about the verdict. I don’t get going out and looting/rioting 5min from where you live. Be constructive not destructive, and Torrey Smith added Also as mad as a lot of people are over the verdict…trying to take out Zimmerman isn’t the answer neither.