While George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Florida teen Trayvon Martin, remains in hiding after the controversial incident, his family has been out doing the talk show circuit in hopes of stemming some of the backlash against Zimmerman since Martin was killed.
Although the week began with some victim-blaming aimed at Trayvon Martin- an image of a different, adult male also named Trayvon began circulating first on racist message board Stormfront before making its way into the conservative mainstream blogosphere- the tide soon turned. Surveillance video of Zimmerman shortly after Trayvon Martin was killed surfaced, seemingly invalidating his claims that he had been in a scuffle with the teen, necessitating the use of deadly force.
Zimmerman claims to have sustained a broken nose and loss of blood in the altercation that preceded Martin’s death, but the surveillance video does not seem to indicate Zimmerman actually suffered any of the injuries he claimed. Now, while Zimmerman continues to lay low, his family has been popping up to defend his actions on the night Trayvon Martin was killed.
Zimmerman’s brother now claims Martin tried to disarm George Zimmerman before the shooting. Speaking of “mythology” and “fantasy” surrounding the case’s narrative, he told Piers Morgan last night:
“You return force with force when somebody assaults you. George was out of breath, he was barely conscious. [George would have been] dead had he not acted decisively and instantaneously in that moment when he was being disarmed.”
It may seem kind of audacious to some, but Zimmerman actually addressed Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, in his remarks on the show, saying:
“This is a tragedy. [Fulton’s] son was lost. I feel very badly about that and I want, in the end, not for [Martin’s] memory to be seen as how we degraded our system and turned it into mob rule and went into a hate speech… Ultimately, we all wish that this was a different situation.”
Robert Zimmerman Jr. said the family is “confident” medical records that have not yet been revealed will vindicate his brother. Earlier this week, the funeral director that handled Martin’s body said that it was unlikely Trayvon was involved in any scuffles before he died.
