It was God’s Plan
for me to have a gun the night I killed Trayvon!
George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman charged with murdering unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, said during his first televised interview: "I'm not a racist. I'm not a murderer."
Zimmerman,
joined by his defense attorney Mark O'Mara, sat down with conservative Fox News
talk show host Sean Hannity and discussed the events that unfolded the February
night Zimmerman shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin, the national outrage the
shooting caused and what he perceived as the media's rush to
judgment.
"Is there
anything that you regret? Do you regret getting out of the car to follow Trayon
that night?" Hannity asked. "Do you regret that you had a gun that
night?"
"No, sir,"
Zimmerman, 28, replied. "I feel that it was all God's plan and not
for me to second-guess it or judge it."
At times
Zimmerman seemed to eek out a nervous smile, with sweat gathering on his upper
lip. He spent much of the one-hour interview recounting the moments just before
and after the shooting. But he also addressed Martin's parents. When asked what
he would say to them, he answered, "I would tell them again that I'm
sorry."
"I don't have, my wife
and I don't have any children," he said. "I have nephews that I love more than
life, I love them more than myself. I know that when they were born it was a
different, unique bond and love that I have with them. And I love my children,
even though they aren't born yet. And I am sorry that they buried their child. I
can't imagine what it must feel like, and I pray for them
daily."
Zimmerman was
arrested 44 days after the Feb. 26 shooting in his gated community in Sanford,
Fla. He was jailed on two separate occasions and is now free on bail. Zimmerman
told Hannity that while he has few regrets of the way he handled himself that
night, the result was a "tragic situation and I hope that it's the most
difficult thing I'll ever go through in my life."
About 45
minutes after the televised interview, Martin's family released a statement
condemning Zimmerman's comments.
"George Zimmerman said
that he does not regret getting out of his vehicle, he does not regret following
Trayvon, in fact he does not regret anything he did that night," the statement
read. "He wouldn't do anything different and he concluded it was God's
plan.
"We must worship a different God because there is no way that my
God would have wanted George Zimmerman to kill my teenage son," Tracy Martin, Martin's father, said
in the statement.
WATCH GEORGE:
Much of what
Zimmerman addressed in the one-hour interview was rehashed, the stuff of
previous news fodder from police reports, recorded phone calls and witness
statements.
But it was
the first time that Zimmerman publicly spoke about the shooting since he took
the witness stand during an April bond hearing. And it gave him an opportunity
to counter reports this week that a cousin claimed he molested her over the
course of a decade when they were younger, and that his family was boastfully
racist.
First,
Hannity asked Zimmerman to "take us back to that night."
Zimmerman
said that per his usual Sunday routine, he was on his way to do some grocery
shopping at a nearby Target store when Martin caught his
attention.
"That's the
last time I've been home," Zimmerman said.
It was a
rainy night, and Zimmerman said that Martin seemed suspicious because of the
leisurely way that he was walking and ducking between the houses. Martin didn't
look like a resident running out to get the mail or a "fitness fanatic,"
Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman sat
in his vehicle, his 9 mm handgun tucked into his waistband. He told Hannity that
aside from work, he kept the licensed handgun on him at all times. Zimmerman, a
neighborhood watch volunteer, told Hannity that he'd joined the previous August
after a neighbor's house was broken into while she was home with her 9-month old
baby. Zimmerman said his wife, Shellie, saw the burglars escape through their
backyard.
"That was
enough to scare her, to shake her up," Zimmerman said. "I promised her I would
do what I could to keep her safe."
On an audio
recording of a call Zimmerman made to a police non-emergency number the night of
the shooting, Zimmerman said Martin saw him sitting in his vehicle and walked
toward him, reaching into his waistband.
"I thought he
was just trying to intimidate me," Zimmerman said.
On that same
phone call to police, Zimmerman said Martin then ran. He told Hannity that
Martin wasn't running at all, more like "skipping."
Zimmerman
said he never went more than 100 feet from his vehicle, and got out just to see
where he was. When asked about the gap from the time Zimmerman hangs up with the
police dispatcher and the time Martin is killed, and whether he was following
Martin after the dispatcher warned against it, Zimmerman said he wasn't. He said
that he was simply trying to locate a proper address, and that he wasn't chasing
Martin.
Less than 30
seconds later, Zimmerman said Martin appeared, "asked me what my problem was"
and "punched and broke my nose." Zimmerman said that he wasn't sure if he was
knocked on his back or pushed, but landed on his back with Martin pummeling him
and smashing his head into the sidewalk "more than a dozen"
times.
He said
Martin taunted him during the struggle, telling him to "shut up, shut up, shut
up," and at one point saying, "You're going to die
tonight."
Zimmerman
said Martin tried to suffocate him by covering his mouth and his broken nose
with his hands. Zimmerman said that he screamed out hoping to alert the police,
who he assumed would be arriving. Zimmerman said Martin
noticed the gun in his waistband.
"At that
point I realized that it wasn't my gun, it wasn't his gun, it was the gun,"
Zimmerman said. "I didn't have anymore time."
Zimmerman
fired a single bullet into Martin's chest.
"He sat up
and said something to the effect of, 'You got it,' or 'You got me,'" Zimmerman
said.
Zimmerman
said he at first didn't realize how badly Martin was injured. About an hour
later, after he was taken to the police station, he learned he'd killed the
youth.
"Why do you
think Trayvon would have confronted you the way he did," Hannity asked. "Could
there have been any possibility that he though you were after him and you though
he was after you and there was some misunderstanding in any
way?"
"I wrestled
with that for a long time, but one of my biggest issues through this ordeal has
been the media, conjecture, and I can't assume or make believe," said
Zimmerman.
Hannity then
referenced that Martin's parents lost their son and what if anything Zimmerman
would say to them if he could.
"I pray for
them daily," Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman has
been charged with second-degree murder and faces a possible life sentence if
convicted. He said he thinks about that possibility daily, but trusts the
system.
"It's a
finite situation that I've been placed in," he said, "... I have no choice but
to believe in the system."
O'Mara
declined to allow Zimmerman to speak on allegations by prosecutors that he lied
to the court during an early bond hearing in which he and his wife told the
judge that they were broke, while days later it was revealed that the couple
were sitting on more than $135,000 in donated funds. Shellie Zimmerman has been
since charged with perjury and the judge has suggested that George Zimmerman may
have broken the law as well.
O'Mara for
the first time said that he is considering using Florida's controversial Stand
Your Ground law, which gives people wide discretion in the use of deadly force,
as a defense.
Zimmerman
refuted claims by a cousin, now in her mid-20s, who told investigators that his
immediate family were racist and that he sexually molested her from the time she
was 6 years old until she was about 16.
"It is ironic
the one and only person that they could find that's saying anything remotely to
me being a racist also claims that I'm a deviant," Zimmerman
said.
The interview
comes after rumors that Hannity had offered to pay some of Zimmerman's legal
fees. The rumor mill began churning this week after Zimmerman was heard in newly
released recorded jailhouse phone calls telling a friend that a mystery
benefactor he identified only as "SH" had agreed to support
him.
Globalgrind.com later
reported that "a rock-solid source" confirmed that the personal email addres for
'SH' that George Zimmerman gave to a friend is Hannity's, "thus confirming that
'SH' is in fact the Fox News host," the website reported. Hannity during the
interview denied offering Zimmerman anything.
The
Zimmerman-Hannity relationship goes back several months. In April, Zimmerman
defied his then-lawyers and spoke with Hannity in an off-the-record phone
conversation. Hannity later conducted what critics have called a sympathetic
interview with Zimmerman's father.
Toward the
end of the interview, Hannity asked Zimmerman to look into the camera and
address Martin's family, the American people and "so many people with so many
opinions that vary so much ... to tell them about George Zimmerman and Trayvon
Martin."
Zimmerman
looked into the camera, and said:
"I do wish that there
was something, anything that I could have done that wouldn't have put me in the
position where I had to take his life. And I do want to tell everyone, my wife,
my family my parents, my grandmother, the Martins, the city of Sanford and
America, that I'm sorry that this happened. I hate to think that because of this
incident, because of my actions, it's polarized and divided America and I'm
truly sorry."
Exodus 20:7: Do Not take the Lord your God name in VAIN For the Lord will not leave him UNPUNISHED who takes his name is vain!
Seriously!?!, This
sick sack of sh*t says it was God’s Plan??? Zimmerman has stated he wasn't
following Martin and he has also stated (4 times to the SPD officers) that he
was following Martin. Then he stated he was just "going in the same direction"
which means who knew where Martin was and which direction Martin was walking.
That indicates to me that he was indeed stalking Martin...and for no reason and
with no authority to do so. Also while watching this Did anyone notice Hannity's
precise phrasing in "I did not offer to pay for your legal bills. . . " It got
me wondering whether he just paid for it WITHOUT providing an offer. It would be
just like Hannity to equivocate with language like that. He could always say to
himself and others, "I told the truth! I never technically OFFERED! I just
paid!" Nothing would surprise me.
And now his
'GOD' made him do it. He needs to spend a very long time in a Florida
Penitentiary
We must have Justice for
Trayvon!
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