BIDDING IN AN online auction for the pistol former neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon Martin appeared to have been hijacked by fake accounts posting astronomically high bids.
At one point early today, the bidding surpassed $65 million (€57.6 million) with the leading bidder using the screen name “Racist McShootFace”. The site later showed that account had been deleted.
Other screen names of bidders on the site included “Donald Trump,” ”shaniqua bonifa” and “Tamir Rice,” the name of a black 12-year-old who was shot and killed by Cleveland police in 2014 while playing with a pellet gun.
The website for United Gun Group began hosting the auction yesterday after another website, GunBroker.com, took down the auction saying it wanted “no part in the listing on our website or in any of the publicity it is receiving.”
Hours later, United Gun Group tweeted that it would post Zimmerman’s ad. The new link was posted, along with a statement from Zimmerman. The site calls itself a “social market place for the firearms community.”
Bidding on the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol began at $5,000.
Critics called the auction an insensitive move to profit from the slaying.
Zimmerman had told Orlando, Florida, TV station WOFL that the pistol was returned to him by the US Justice Department, which took it after he was acquitted in Martin’s 2012 shooting death.
“If you want peace, prepare for war”
Zimmerman’s listing said a portion of the proceeds would go toward fighting what Zimmerman calls violence by the Black Lives Matter movement against law enforcement officers, combating anti-gun rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and ending the career of state attorney Angela Corey, who led Zimmerman’s prosecution.
The listing ended with a Latin phrase that translates as “if you want peace, prepare for war”.
Zimmerman, now 32, has said he was defending himself when he killed Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, in a gated community near Orlando. Martin, who lived in Miami with his mother, was visiting his father at the time.
Zimmerman, who identifies as Hispanic, was acquitted in Martin’s February 2012 shooting death. The case sparked protests and a national debate about race relations. The Justice Department later decided not to prosecute Zimmerman on civil rights charges.
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