President Barack Obama spoke out about the Trayvon Martin shooting Friday morning at a press briefing nominating Dr. Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank.
"If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon," he said. "And I think [his parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened."
African-American leaders and bloggers have been pressuring the president to speak out about the Martin case--which has sparked new racial profiling debates, rallied protests, and resulted in Sanford's chief of police to step down. George Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed martin a month ago in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman claims self-defense under Florida's "stand your ground" law. Martin, 17, was unarmed. No arrests have been made.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have since launched an independent investigation.
"When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids," Obama said, adding,"All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen?"
Obama lauded investigation efforts that have now taken shape a month after the shooting, and said it was "absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this … to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened."
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