THE SOBBING WIFE OF of George Zimmerman called 911 yesterday to report that her estranged husband was threatening her with a gun and had punched her father in the nose, but hours later she decided not to press charges against the man acquitted of all charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin.
Police officers in Lake Mary, Florida, were still investigating the encounter as a domestic dispute, but no charges had been filed as of last night.
Denied wrongdoing
Mark O’Mara, attorney for George Zimmerman, speaks with a police officer at the scene. AP Photo/John Raoux
Shellie Zimmerman left the house after being questioned by police. George Zimmerman remained there into the early evening and his attorney denied any wrongdoing by his client. George Zimmerman was not arrested.
Shellie Zimmerman, 26, who has filed for divorce, initially told a 911 dispatcher that her husband had his hand on his gun as he sat in his car outside the home she was at with her father.
She said she was scared because she wasn’t sure what the 29-year-old Zimmerman was capable of doing. Hours later she changed her story and said she never saw a firearm, said Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell.
For the time being, “domestic violence can’t be invoked because she has changed her story and says she didn’t see a firearm,” Bracknell said.
“We didn’t find a gun,” Lake Mary police spokesman Zach Hudson said late Monday night.
We didn’t find anything that indicated he had a gun on his person.
Hudson said Zimmerman was released from investigative detention at around 6.30pm and “he just walked back into the house.”
“Right now he’s not a suspect in anything per se, but were still viewing the video and trying to ascertain what new information that may yield,” he said, referring to video from home surveillance cameras outside the house.
911 call
On the 911 call, Shellie Zimmerman is sobbing and repeating “Oh my God” as she talks to a police dispatcher. She yells at her father to get inside the house, saying Zimmerman may start shooting at them.
“He’s threatening all of us with a firearm … He punched my dad in the nose,” Shellie Zimmerman said on the call. “I don’t know what he’s capable of. I’m really scared.”
She also said he grabbed an iPad from her hand and smashed it.
Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, said his client never threatened his estranged wife and her father with a gun and never punched his father-in-law. Shellie Zimmerman had collected most of her belongings on Saturday from the house, which is owned by her parents, where she and George had both been staying until she moved out.
She had returned unexpectedly yesterday to gather the remaining items. Emotions got out of control, O’Mara said, but neither side is filing charges against the other.
I know the 911 tape suggests that Shellie was saying something but I think that was heightened emotions. There may have been some pushing and touching. That happens a lot in divorce situations … Nobody was injured.
Her father also declined to press charges, the police chief said.
In her divorce filing last week, Shellie Zimmerman said she and her husband had separated a month after he was acquitted of any crime for fatally shooting the 17-year-old Martin in Sanford, not far from where Monday’s investigation happened.
Shellie Zimmerman asked the dispatcher to send an ambulance to check her father out. A fire department ambulance arrived at the house, Hudson said, but nobody needed to be transported.
Last month, Shellie Zimmerman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour perjury charge for lying about the couple’s finances during a bail hearing following her husband’s arrest in Martin’s shooting.
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