The funeral director who embalmed Trayvon Martin’s body saw no bruising or cuts on his hands or any other evidence that he’d been in some kind of altercation. He saw a bullet wound in his upper chest. That’s it. This fits with the video evidence from George Zimmerman’s arrival at the police station a mere thirty-four minutes after the police arrived at the scene. Zimmerman also showed no signs of having been in any kind of altercation.
Of course we know from the testimony of several witnesses that an altercation took place. It just doesn’t seem like it lasted very long or that either of them was able to do much damage to the other.
What’s become even more clear is that the story being told from the Zimmerman camp, and even to a certain degree the police department, doesn’t look plausible because it doesn’t match up with any of the disinterested evidence in the case.
Let’s just take a look at the testimony of three separate neighbors, one of which watched the fatal moment, and the other two who heard it and then saw the immediate aftermath.
The witness recounted seeing two men on the grass, one on top of the other. “And at that point, not looking out the window, I heard the yell for help, one yell for help, and then I heard another … excruciating type of yell. It didn’t almost sound like ‘help.’ It just sounded so painful. But I wasn’t watching out the window during that. And then the next time I looked out the window, there’s the same thing: two men on the grass, one on top of each other. I couldn’t see a lot of movement. It was very dark, but I felt like they were scuffling. And then I heard the gunshots, which, to me, were more like pops than they were like a bang.”
The witness recalled hearing more than one shot. “It definitely was more than one pop noise, so I don’t know if it was an echo or anything else. But it definitely made more than one pop.”
Also:
The witness says: “As I said it was dark, but after the shot … one man got up … it was only in a couple seconds or so that he was walking towards where I was watching. And I could see him a little bit clearer, and see that he was a Hispanic man and he was, you know, he didn’t appear hurt or anything else, he just kind of seemed very, worried or whatever, walked on the sidewalk at that point, with his hand up to his forehead and then another man came out with a flashlight.”
And:
Mary Cutcher was in her kitchen making coffee that night with her roommate, Selma Mora Lamilla. The window was open, she said.
“We heard a whining. Not like a crying, boohoo, but like a whining, someone in distress, and then the gunshot,” she said.
They looked out the window but saw nothing. It was dark.
They ran out the sliding glass door, and within seconds, they saw Zimmerman.“Zimmerman was standing over the body with — basically straddling the body with his hands on Trayvon’s back,” Cutcher said. “And it didn’t seem to me that he was trying to help him in any way. I didn’t hear any struggle prior to the gunshot.
“And I feel like it was Trayvon Martin that was crying out, because the minute that the gunshot went off, the whining stopped.”
The two women said they could not see whether Zimmerman was bruised or hurt. It was too dark.“Selma asked him three times, ‘what’s going on over there?’ ” Cutcher said. “He looks back and doesn’t say anything. She asks him again, ‘everything OK? What’s going on?’ Same thing: looked at us, looked back. Finally, the third time, he said, ‘just call the police.’
Also:
Lamilla said that Zimmerman appeared to be pacing after the shooting: “He started walking back and forth like three times with his hand on the head and kind of, he was walking like kind of confused.”
Cutcher said of Martin’s last moments: “It sounded young. It didn’t sound like a grown man is my point. It sounded to me like someone was in distress and it wasn’t like a crying, sobbing boo-hoo, it was a definite whine.”
There are some very minor disparities between these two accounts, but together they paint a consistent picture. There was some yelling. Then there was a very heartbreaking kind of pleading sound. Then a gun shot. There weren’t any sounds indicating a fight. One witness described more of a scuffle with one man on top of the other. None of the witnesses thought that Zimmerman appeared to be injured, but they all agreed that he appeared to be worried, holding a hand to his head in kind of a “what just happened?” fashion.
To go with this, we also have Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend’s account. She was on the phone up until about a minute before the police arrived on the scene, and she felt like she heard a pushing match that caused Trayvon’s earpiece to fall out and the call to cut off. Independent records confirm the timing of the call. The last spoken words she heard were Trayvon asking Zimmerman why he was following him and Zimmerman replying by asking Trayvon what he was doing in the neighborhood.
Considering how tight the timeline is here, it appears that this is what happened. Trayvon interrupted his conversation with his girlfriend to confront Zimmerman. Zimmerman was verbally aggressive in return. They approached each other and started pushing. Loud words were exchanged. The fight went to the ground. Zimmerman wound up on top. Martin cried out for help. Then Zimmerman pulled his gun on him, causing Martin to make a frightened desperate plea. And then he was executed.
Then Zimmerman got up and started pacing around in a worried fashion. Within moments the first police officer arrived. At some point, it was decided to concoct a cover story, which involved Officer Timothy Smith fabricating evidence about Zimmerman bleeding from the nose and head and having grass all over his back. Most likely, he never received any medical attention from the fire department at all.
Within 34 minutes, Zimmerman was at the police station looking to be completely uninjured and with no signs of grass or wetness on his jacket.
From there, we can conjecture about a lot more, including the role of the prosecutor in the case who overruled the lead investigator and decided not to press charges.
But the evidence does not support the story that Trayvon attacked Zimmerman, punched him in the face, broke his nose, or slammed his head into the walkway repeatedly. About the only thing left to argue is that Trayvon went for his gun.
But that doesn’t explain an apparently fabricated story that was filed by an officer at the scene.
