While announcing his pick as Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank earlier this morning, President Obama made his first public comments on the death of Sanford, Fla. teenager Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed February 26 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch patrolman acting under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law.”

“When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” Obama said, after being asked by NBC’s Mike Viqueira. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

The president also said that it was “absolutely imperative” that Martin’s death be investigated to the fullest detail. In a press conference yesterday, Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee Jr. said he was stepping down pending an investigation of the shooting. Additionally, the district attorney for Brevard and Seminole counties recused himself from the case. Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced this morning the appointment of a special prosecutor.

From his brief statement, it appears Obama is as impacted as the rest of us by Martin’s shocking death, an incident for which Zimmerman is hiding behind a statute that allows people who believe themselves to be in danger to use lethal force in public. “All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this happened,” Obama said.

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