A concrete case

In the fall of 1976, this writer was playing on a semi-pro football team in Brooklyn, NY. We were in a ‘rough touch’ league in Bay Ridge, played on a concrete field.

I was the quarterback and one snap went over my head . . . rolling along the concrete . . . a ‘live ball’ that could be recovered by the opposing team. So, I ran after it and as I cradled it on the ground, a horde of defenders arrived and jumped on me. My bare head hit the ground and I was knocked unconscious . . . for but a few seconds they told me afterwards. Yet, when I came to, I did not know where I was or what day it was. So, they rushed me to a hospital and it was ascertained that I had a concussion.

Fast forward nearly 37 years later, to Sanford, Florida. A man alleges, because there are no eyewitnesses, that he was on the ground, being pummeled by a 17-year-old skinny kid, who was bashing his head into the concrete . . . repeatedly! He thus felt, so he said, that he was losing consciousness and feared for his life. You know the rest: The skinny 17-year-old kid lay dead, and George Zimmerman was soon allowed by the police to go home. Wait! Surely the medic on the scene, after hearing George’s tale of being ‘at deaths door’ due to the concrete bashing of his head, did in fact send him to the hospital for tests. Brain and skull damages are no laughing matter. Anyone, having that happen to them, would want to go and get his or her head examined, yes? Not our neighborhood watch hero. No, he went. . . . home!

Without such an alibi, methinks that no jury of honest citizens would find for an acquittal. How could they? The facts were as they were presented: Zimmerman followed the youth when he was advised not to do so. Zimmerman had a loaded gun on his hip . . . the kid had snacks. They met somewhere on the rainy grass, had a confrontation, Zimmerman got his nose punched, they scuffled, and he fired one deadly shot.

In my hometown of Brooklyn, NY, there were countless fistfights each and every day throughout the borough . . . usually with two guys using bare knuckles with no guns. Fistfight are as old as mankind for goodness sakes! However, when one of the participants brings a lethal weapon into the mix, it is called assault where I come from . . . and in Zimmerman’s case manslaughter!

One bit of concrete hitting this writer’s head and off to a hospital to get it checked before I went on home. Georgie, too, went home, not once, but twice!

Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a free lance columnist (found on TheSleuthJournal.com, The Intrepid Report, The Peoples Voice, Information Clearing house, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010, he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.