Friday, March 15, 2:11 p.m. EDT: George Zimmerman's defense team has released new evidence to the public, including photos of Trayvon Martin's cellphone, HLN reports. The device may be an important piece of evidence at trial, because the teenager was on the phone with his girlfriend when Zimmerman approached him the night he died. Zimmerman's attorneys said that the evidence also included a data file from Trayvon's phone, but it can't be released to the public.
Tuesday, March 12, 10:48 a.m. EDT: "If we we're not doing anything positive to try and help somebody else, I think we would be doing damage to ourselves," Sybrina Fulton told a gathering on Sunday at Overcoming Believers Church in Knoxville, Tenn., according to WBIR 10 TV. Since the shooting death of their son Trayvon nearly a year ago, Fulton and her ex-husband, Tracy Martin, have been traveling across the nation as speakers in an effort to connect with communities to discuss the toll of gun violence on families in America.
Monday, March 11, 1:30 p.m. EDT: Sanford City Hall in Florida reports that it has spent nearly $603,000 on overtime, mostly for police officers, since George Zimmerman, the self-appointed neighborhood-watch captain, shot and killed unarmed teen Trayvon Martin, the Orlando Sentinel reports. A large part of the balance was spent on city employees for regular and overtime work to help monitor media and protesters who descended on the town after the shooting, according to the city's finance department. The city also spent a large amount of money on legal advice and guidance on how to respond to public-records requests, as well as consulting fees to two headhunter companies scouting for a new police chief.
Read last week's updates on the Trayvon Martin case here.
Read all of The Root's news and commentary about the Trayvon Martin case here.