Teen Charged After Telling Blacks to Leave Whole Foods

Complex portrait emerges of Trayvon Martin's killer

(NEWSER) - In a bizarre twist in a killing that has come to stand for deadly racial violence, it turns out that the great grandfather of Trayvon Martin's killer was African-Peruvian. George Zimmerman was generally regarded as trustworthy by his racially mixed Florida neighbors, who asked him to launch a community watch program last year after a string of burglaries (though few knew he was carrying a gun on patrol), according to a Reuters investigation based on extensive interviews with acquaintances, friends and relatives. He was encouraged by a police officer to get a gun after a pit bull menaced his wife in 2009. He did, and underwent firearms training. More»

Harassed him with incessant voicemails

(NEWSER) - A jury has awarded a Texas man $1.5 million in his lawsuit over a series of racist and profane voicemails allegedly left by insistent debt collectors. The man, 26-year-old Allen Jones, says employees of Advanced Call Center Technologies harassed him with ever more aggressive calls, using racially charged language. “Go pick some motherfucking cotton fields!” a caller suggested in one tape provided by Jones' lawyers. More»

Online 'bragging' helped the case

(NEWSER) - New Jersey police have arrested a 16-year-old boy and charged him with using a public-address system in a Wal-Mart store to ask "all the black people" to leave, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer . He faces up to a year in a juvenile detention center if convicted on charges of harassment and bias. Police say they scoured Facebook and other online postings for comments about the incident and found instances of "kids bragging," notes the New York Times . More»

Company apologizes for 'appalling' incident

(NEWSER) - A New Jersey Wal-Mart is checking security footage to find out who used the PA system to order "all black people" to leave the Washington Township store. Over a dozen black customers were in the store when a male voice said: "Attention Wal-Mart customers, all black people must leave the store now." Police are treating the incident as a bias crime. More»

(NEWSER) - Don Imus sat down with the Rutgers women’s basketball team last night, hours after he became a former radio star for calling them “nappy-headed hos.” The meeting, which included their coaches and parents, took place at the New Jersey governor’s mansion, whose proprietor, Jon Corzine, was en route when he was seriously injured in a car crash. More»