Trayvon Martin case 911 call: Two experts reach two very different conclusions

Graphic: The neighborhood where Trayvon Martin was killed.

By Stephanie McCrummen and Sari Horwitz, Published: May 19, 2012

In the last 45 seconds, there is a faint voice, a distant yell, and the urgent dialogue between a woman and a 911 operator.

“There’s just someone screaming outside,” the caller begins on the recorded line.

 

There is more distant yelling obscured by the operator — “Male or female?” — and the caller — “I think they’re yelling ‘help,’ but I don’t know.” There is a high-pitched scream, a kind of cry, and then the clearest sound of all.

“There’s gunshots. . . . Just one,” the woman says on the only 911 call to record what was happening in the dark at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated townhouse community in Sanford, Fla., on the night of Feb. 26.

Those recorded 45 seconds turned out to be a recording of the end of Trayvon Martin’s life.
And amid the conflicting, hazy and at times emotional reports from neighbors who heard and glimpsed only fragments of what was happening during those crucial seconds, the audio recording of them — from the start of the call at 7:16:11 p.m. until the gunshot at 7:16:56 p.m. — is perhaps the closest prosecutors and defense attorneys may come to an objective witness to the events that night.
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