Trayvon was 6-foot-3, 140 pounds, a former Optimist League football player with a narrow frame and a voracious appetite. He wanted to fly or fix planes, struggled in chemistry, loved sports video games and went to New York for the first time two summers ago, seeing the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and a Broadway musical, The Addams Family. He hoped to attend the University of Miami or Florida A&M University, enamored by both schools' bright orange and green hues.
Also known as "Slimm", he had a girlfriend and spent endless hours talking or texting on his cell phone. Other times he was quiet, listening to the soundtrack of R&B, reggae, rap and gospel music flowing through his ear buds or watching half-hour re-runs of Martin, his favorite show.
Trayvon's parents — his mother is a Miami-Dade government employee and his dad is a truck driver — divorced in 1999 but lived near each other in Miami Gardens, working hard to raise Trayvon with family values and lift him above the statistics. They tried to make sure he was exposed to experiences beyond South Florida: skiing, snowboarding and riding snowmobiles. Mother and son went horseback riding for her birthday, 13 days after his.
Still, Trayvon had nonviolent behavioral issues in school, and on the day he was killed, he had been suspended for 10 days from Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School in North Miami-Dade.
"He was not suspended for something dealing with violence or anything like that. It wasn't a crime he committed, but he was in an unauthorized area [on school property]," Martin said, declining to offer more details.
Before that, Trayvon attended Miami Carol City High School near his mother's home in Miami Gardens.
Trayvon's older brother, Jhavaris Fulton, 21, is a junior at Florida International University.
When he was a child, Trayvon saved his father's life.
Trayvon spent his freshman year and much of his sophomore year at Carol City, where on Thursday, more than 1,000 students walked out to honor him and fight for justice in the case.
His first year there, Trayvon would spend mornings at the high school — a roomy campus of cream buildings in Miami Gardens — and then go to George T. Baker Aviation School for the rest of the school day. Inspired by his uncle, Ronald Fulton, who had a brief career in aviation, Trayvon saw his future in planes.
Math was his favorite subject, according to one of his Carol City teachers, Ashley Gantt .She taught his sophomore year English honors class where the curriculum included works such as T he Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Sometimes he'd come to the second period class looking exhausted. Gantt would call out his name.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Gantt. I'm not asleep. I'm listening," he'd reply, she said.
He'd often wear a hoodie at school – just like the one he was wearing the day he was killed in Sanford.
Gantt said she never saw Trayvon behave aggressively or show disrespect.
Students at Carol City, some who now wear Trayvon memorial buttons, have compared his death to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, who went to visit family in Mississippi and never returned. Emmett Till was pulled from his bed, beaten to death and dumped in a river for allegedly whistling at a white woman, one of the nation's most famous civil rights cases.
"The injustice [is the same] in both situations — Zimmerman is still free and the killers of Emmett Till, they went free eventually," Gantt said.
At Krop, a sprawling campus near the county line, home to some 2,700 students, a few of the students recalled the days they shared with Trayvon in middle school. He attended both Norland Middle and Highland Oaks Middle schools, both also in North Miami-Dade.
Dominique Clarke, 17 who knew him from Highland Oaks, said he was very quiet and kept to himself. The friends took Spanish together.
One day at Krop last year, Brian Paz, 16, opened the door by the vending machine and he saw Trayvon. They had been good friends at Highland Oaks, but went to separate high schools.
"I was like 'What's up man?' I was happy to see him again," Brian recalled.
They became close friends. When Brian's mother, who is from Colombia, called her son, "he would say my name in a funny way. I'll never forget the way he said it. 'Brrrian,' '' Brian remembered, rolling his 'r' and laughing at the memory before becoming more serious.
Trayvon left the Sanford townhouse on a rainy Sunday night nearly a month ago to walk to a nearby convenience store. On his way back, candy and canned ice tea in hand, Zimmerman decided he looked suspicious. He called police who advised him not to follow the boy.
Questions remain about what happened next, but Trayvon was shot, his body found face down on the ground, 70 yards from the back door of the townhouse.
Zimmerman has not been charged.
He told police he felt threatened and that Trayvon jumped him. He responded, he said, by taking out a 9mm handgun and shooting in self-defense.
Trayvon was buried six days later.