Trayvon Martin's Parents Relive Every Parent's Nightmare

The night Tracy Martin couldn't reach his son Trayvon - the night the boy was killed - he didn't initially worry.

Tracy returned home after having dinner out Feb. 26, but Trayvon wasn't there, he told People recently. He called his son's cell phone. It went straight to his voicemail. Still, he didn't worry. the 17-year-old Sanford, Fla. young man had been out with Tracy's 20-year-old nephew, who Tracy described in this latest interview as a "responsible young man."

"There wasn't a panic that he wasn't at home," Martin said. "I figured that they had gone to the movies, because they had said they might. So I laid down, thinking they would show up later."

As events have been presently constructed, Martin's thinking wasn't off-base. Trayvon had apparently been coming home from a nearby 7-Eleven with Skittles and iced tea. That was when he crossed paths with the Martins' gated community neighborhood watch captain, a 28-year-old Hispanic man named George Zimmerman.

The next morning, Tracy's worries began. Trayvon wasn't home yet. Martin called his nephew, who said he hadn't seen Trayvon. When Martin called the Sheriff's Department to file his missing person's report, he told them it indeed hadn't yet been 24 hours but that it was unusual that his son be out of touch this long.

Martin would face the resolution to his worries of which every parent harbors a deep, sometimes silent, sometimes latent, always present fear.

Three police cars arrived, Martin recalled. A detective addressed him, asked if Martin had a photo of Trayvon he might see. Martin showed him the one on his phone. The detective showed him the photo of Trayvon's body, shot dead, and asked if that was Trayvon. Then, Martin said, "the nightmare began."

Zimmerman has claimed that it was self-defense. Zimmerman had come across Trayvon, wearing a hoodie, while patrolling the neighborhood. The two had a tense confrontation, Zimmerman has claimed. The 911 tape since released seems to have recorded Trayvon Martin pleaing for his life. There's since been a nationwide outcry calling for Zimmerman's arrest, but he's evoked the substantial leeway of Florida's Stand Your Ground Law, which protects individuals claiming self-defense in incidents involving firearms.

Martin called Trayvon's mother and his ex-wife, Sybrina Fulton, and told her that Trayvon was dead.

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing; it just didn't seem real," Fulton recalled tearfully. "And finally I said, 'I need you to go and actually identify his body.' I needed to know if that was my baby, dead."

Once Martin had confirmed it was in fact their son, Fulton's new reality washed over her.

"I just started to cry and cry," Fulton said. "People tell me I'm strong; I'm not strong. I'm a mother. I still have trouble believe that he's done. I look at every door and think, he's just going to walk through it any minute. I just want to see him again; but I can't. He's in Heaven, looking down at me."