NAACP spokesman Derek Turner told ABCNews.com that the petition garnered approximately 225,000 signatures between the hours of 11 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. Sunday.
Sometime overnight, the NAACP’s website crashed, Turner said, because of “too many viewers and too many hits.”
The NAACP’s website was still inaccessible as of this morning, and Turner said the organization is working to get it back up and running. He did not know how long the website had been down, but he was last able to access it around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, he said.
The same petition was also made available on MoveOn.org in partnership with the NAACP early Sunday morning. It gained more than 130,000 supporters by noon today.
“Our members, like so many Americans, are outraged at the verdict. Justice has not been served. The facts are clear: a 17-year-old boy is dead because George Zimmerman shot him. This is a sad day for our country and our justice system,” MoveOn.org Civic Action executive director Anna Galland said in a statement.
An investigation had previously been opened by the Justice Department, and the department said Saturday night, “The department continues to evaluate the evidence generated during the federal investigation, as well as the evidence and testimony from the state trial.”