Fact
Plaintiff STATE OF FLORIDA
Defendant GEORGE ZIMMERMAN
Zimmerman called Sanford police at 7:09 to report his suspicions. He told the dispatcher that the man in "a grey hoodie" was "just walking around looking at all the houses" and "now he's staring at me." Telling the dispatcher "he's coming to check me out," Zimmerman asked, "How long until you can get an officer over here?" Told by the officer "we've got someone on the way," Zimmerman responded in frustration: "These assholes, they always get away."
Martin, meanwhile, was talking on his cellphone with a friend in Miami named Rachel Jeantel. He complained to Jeantel "that a man was watching him"--a man Martin described as "a creepy-ass cracka." Jeantel warned Martin that the man might be a rapist and urged him to run.
Zimmerman told the dispatcher, "Shit, he's running," and got over his car to follow him. The dispatcher, sensing that Zimmerman was giving chase, asked, "Are you following him?" When Zimmerman replied, "Yeah," the dispatcher said, "Okay, we don't need you to do that." Zimmerman answered, "Okay." The dispatcher suggested that Zimmerman meet the arriving officer "near the mailboxes," and he said, "Yeah, that's fine." Seconds later, the four-minute call to the dispatcher ended. According to Zimmerman's police interview later that night, "I was walking back through to where my car was and he jumped out from the bushes and he said, 'What the fuck's your problem, homey?' And I said, 'I don't have a problem,' and he goes, 'Now you have a problem,' and he punched me in the nose." According to Zimmerman, the punch knocked him to the grass, where Martin continued to pummel him as "I started screaming for help. I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe."
In Zimmerman's retelling of the ensuing struggle to Officer Doris Singleton later that night, Martin "grabbed my head and started hitting it into the sidewalk." Zimmerman managed to pull himself back to the grass and yell, "Help me, help me. He's killing me." Martin, on top of him, responded by covering Zimmerman's mouth with his hand and telling him, "You're going to die tonight." At that point, as he tried to slide away, "my jacket and my shirt came up...and I felt his hand go down on my side and I thought he was going for my firearm. So I grabbed it immediately and as he banged my head again, I just pulled my firearm and shot him."
Martin's friend, Rachel Jeantel would offer a somewhat different version of the encounter. According to Jeantel, Martin was still on the phone with her when he and Zimmerman came face to face. She reported that she "heard Trayvon say, 'Why are you following me for?' Then I heard a man, breathing hard, say, 'What are you doing here?'" She then heard a bump, which she assumed was Martin's headset falling to the ground. As she yelled, "Trayvon, Trayvon" she heard "wet grass sounds" and then "kind of heard" Trayvon saying, "Get off, get off" before the phone shut off.
In Zimmerman's retelling of the ensuing struggle to Officer Doris Singleton later that night, Martin "grabbed my head and started hitting it into the sidewalk." Zimmerman managed to pull himself back to the grass and yell, "Help me, help me. He's killing me." Martin, on top of him, responded by covering Zimmerman's mouth with his hand and telling him, "You're going to die tonight." At that point, as he tried to slide away, "my jacket and my shirt came up...and I felt his hand go down on my side and I thought he was going for my firearm. So I grabbed it immediately and as he banged my head again, I just pulled my firearm and shot him."
Zimmerman's version of events is largely consistent with the statement of eyewitness Jonathan Good, a resident of one of the townhouses close to the site of the fight, and the observer closest to the confrontation and considered by police to be its most reliable eyewitness. Hearing noise outside his residence, Bachelor opened a sliding door to hear cries of "Help, help, help" and see a person wearing a dark sweatshirt on top of a person wearing a "lighter colored"--perhaps "The bullet from Zimmerman's gun penetrated Martin's chest, fatally wounding him. Officer Timothy Smith arrived at the scene less than two minutes after the shooting to find Zimmerman standing near Martin, who was face down in the grass and unresponsive. Zimmerman told Smith he shot Martin in self-defense. Smith took Zimmerman's gun and handcuffed him, noting that he was bleeding from his nose and the back of the head and that the back of his jacket was wet and covered with grass. Zimmerman was taken to the Stanford police station where he was questioned for five hours, first by Officer Singleton and then by Detective Chris Serino. Martin's body was taken to the morgue, where it was tagged as "John Doe."red or white," he guessed (Zimmerman actually wore an orange zip-up sweatshirt)--"shirt or sweatshirt or whatever." Bachelor told police, "The black guy was on top" and "the guy that was on the ground under him...was definitely a lighter color." As Bachelor ran to call 9-1-1 he heard the sound of gunfire. When he looked outside again, Bachelor saw "two gentlemen with flashlights asking what was going on and the one guy that was on the bottom said I shot the other guy in self-defense."
In the first twenty-four hours after the shooting, in addition to subjecting Zimmerman to several hours of questioning, police photographed his injuries, collected gun residue from his hands, gave him a voice stress analysis to test the truthfulness of his assertions (he passed), and took him back to the scene of the shooting where performed a videotaped re-enactment of the incident. On March 12, Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee said, "Until we can establish probable cause to dispute [Zimmerman's claim of self-defense], we don't have the grounds to arrest him." Lee acknowledged the criticism his office had received over its handling of the investigation. "We are taking a beating over this," he said. "This is all very unsettling. I'm sure that if George Zimmerman had the chance to relive Sunday, February 26, he'd probably do things differently. I'm sure Trayvon would too."