Father: 'If Trayvon Had Been White, This Would Have Never Happened

Trayvon Martin's father said he believes if his son had been white, his deadly confrontation with George Zimmerman never would have taken place.

"Anytime you have a person that makes an assumption that a person is up to no good, there's some type of profiling there," Tracy Martin said on NBC's "Today" show Thursday. "Was he racially profiled? I think that if Trayvon had been white, this would have never happened."

Speaking out publicly for the first time since jurors acquitted Zimmerman in the shooting death of the 17-year-old, mother Sybrina Fulton said on ABC's "Good Morning America" her first thought was "shock, disgust" upon hearing the verdict Saturday.

"I really didn't believe that he was not guilty," she said.

A six-person jury cleared Zimmerman of second-degree murder in the 2012 shooting and declined to convict him of manslaughter.

"As parents understanding how they reached the verdict, I'll never grasp that concept," Tracy Martin said. "Just as loving parents and God-fearing people, we just continue to pray that whatever was in their heart was what they intended to do. But we didn't feel it was fair and, of course, it was devastating."

Zimmerman maintained he shot the teen in self-defense during a struggle.

"I think people are forgetting that Trayvon was a teenager so he probably thought as a teenager," Fulton said on ABC. "I really do believe he was afraid because he did call George Zimmerman creepy. So he was afraid and if you are 17 years old and you are afraid, you may not know what to do."

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