Trayvon Martin's Parents Offer Support to Brown Family

Sybrina Fulton knows what it’s like to lose a child in a high-profile case.

That’s why the Florida woman wrote words of encouragement in an open letter to Michael Brown’s family, Time reports. The unarmed teen was shot and killed Aug. 9, sparking ongoing protests and controversy in the St. Louis suburb.

“I wish I had a word of automatic comfort, but I don’t,” Fulton wrote in the letter published Monday.

Martin’s son Trayvon was shot and killed by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in February 2012. Zimmerman, who faced murder charges, was subsequently acquitted of all charges by a Florida jury in July 2013. Trayvon Martin was 17 at the time of his death, and like Brown, was unarmed.

“But know this: neither of their lives shall be in vain,” Martin’s letter to the Brown family reads. “The galvanizations of our communities must be continued beyond the tragedies.”

Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, has also spoken out about Brown’s death.

“The human life has no value in this day and age,” KPLR St. Louis quoted him as saying. “I sympathize with the family.”

Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin are the founders of the Trayvon Martin Foundation. The Florida-based nonprofit was founded “to create awareness of how violent crime impacts the families of the victims and to provide support and advocacy for those families,” its website says.

While Brown’s death remains under investigation, Tracy Martin said now is the time for the family to concentrate on Michael Brown’s burial, KPLR said.

Fulton urges Brown’s family to “injustice.”

“If they refused to hear us, we will make them feel us,” she wrote.

USA Today reports that African Americans are killed by white police officers nearly twice a week. FBI statistics show that 18 percent of the blacks killed in law enforcement-related incidents in a seven-year period ending in 2012 were under the age of 21. That compares to 8.7 percent of whites, the paper reported.

Read Fulton’s full letter to the Brown family on Time.

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Photo Credit: Trayvon Martin/The Trayvon Martin Foundation on Facebook