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Trayvon Martin's mother: 'Don’t think for one second racial profiling doesn’t happen'

Sybrina Fulton was part of a discussion about racial profiling at the University of Utah on Thursday.

By Kate Stanton
The parents of Trayvon Martin, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, listen to the statement given by George Zimmerman to Sanford police on the night of the Trayvon Martin shooting on day sixteen of George Zimmerman's trial in Seminole circuit court Sanford, Florida, July 01, 2013. UPI/Joe Burbank/Pool
The parents of Trayvon Martin, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, listen to the statement given by George Zimmerman to Sanford police on the night of the Trayvon Martin shooting on day sixteen of George Zimmerman's trial in Seminole circuit court Sanford, Florida, July 01, 2013. UPI/Joe Burbank/Pool | License Photo

Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Sybrina Fulton, who's 17-year-old son Trayvon Martin was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in 2012, visited the University of Utah on Thursday to discuss racial profiling.

Hundreds attended the Martin Luther King Week event, in which Fulton said that an "upside" to her son's death was the "opportunity to save someone else's child."

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"Don’t think for one second racial profiling doesn’t happen. Don’t think for one minute even in your community of Salt Lake City it doesn’t happen," she said. "Racism is still alive. Racial profiling is still alive. Injustice is still alive."

Fulton said that the circumstances of her son's death -- he was wearing a hoodie when Zimmerman shot him -- applied all over the country.

"There should not become a time when we are comfortable with burying our children," Fulton said. "What happened many miles away in Sanford should be uncomfortable for you."

"Is it the hoodie that really made the difference? Or the color of his skin?" she asked. "And if by one second, just by one mere second, we think that it's the color of his skin, then something is wrong with America."

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""At the end of the day, it’s not about Trayvon. It’s about the person that felt he was suspicious," she added.

Zimmerman, who was acquitted last year, said he was acting in self-defense when he shot Martin. He recently faced domestic violence charges when his current girlfriend said he had threatened her with a gun and choked her. The Florida state attorney's office decided to drop those charges on her request.

[KSL, Salt Lake Tribune, 4Utah]

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