Obama weighs in on Trayvon Martin killing

WASHINGTON -- Urging Americans to "do some soul searching," President Barack Obama injected himself into the emotional debate over the fatal shooting of a teenager in Florida, turning the racially charged case into a personal matter for the nation's first black president.

"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said Friday.

Obama's words also catapulted the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, already the focus of major national attention, into the presidential campaign. Three Republicans seeking Obama's job all used the word "tragedy" to describe the shooting, as the president did.

"I can only imagine what these parents are going through, and when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids," Obama said in response to a question at the White House.

Obama said the parents of Martin, who was shot Feb. 26 in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando, have a right to expect "that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

Martin was shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who said he was acting in self-defense. Zimmerman's father is white and his mother is Hispanic.

The shooting of the unarmed black teen has stoked debate over race and other issues. Obama did not mention Zimmerman in his comments.

Republican presidential candidates quickly weighed in after Obama spoke.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum called the shooting a "horrible case." Referring to Florida's "stand your ground" law, which gives people wide latitude to use deadly force rather than retreat during a fight, Santorum said: "Stand your ground is not doing what this man did."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in a statement: "What happened to Trayvon Martin is a tragedy. There needs to be a thorough investigation that reassures the public that justice is carried out with impartiality and integrity."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia also called it a tragedy and credited local authorities for empaneling a grand jury. "There's a point in there where there ought to be some kind of signal that's pretty clear that this is a guy who'd found a hobby that's very dangerous," Gingrich said of Zimmerman.

Obama directed his message to Martin's parents, saying, "I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans take this with the seriousness that it deserves, and we're going to get to the bottom of what happened."

He said that "every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and everybody pulls together, federal state and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened."