George Michael Zimmerman was born on October 5,1983 and is an American man who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black boy, in Sanford, Florida, on February 26,2012.
50 Facts About George Zimmerman
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George Michael Zimmerman was born on October 5,1983, in Manassas, Virginia.
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George Zimmerman is the third of four children, and his siblings include a brother, Robert Jr.
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George Zimmerman's mother, Gladys Cristina Zimmerman, was born in Peru.
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George Zimmerman was raised as a Catholic and served as an altar boy from age 7 to 17.
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George Zimmerman attended All Saints Catholic School in Manassas before going to public high school.
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At age 14, George Zimmerman joined an after-school Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program because he had wanted to become a Marine.
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When George Zimmerman was 15 years old, he held three part-time jobs on nights and weekends to save up for a car.
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George Zimmerman took classes at night to obtain a license to sell insurance.
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In July 2005, George Zimmerman was arrested after allegedly assaulting an undercover police officer who was attempting to arrest a friend of his at a bar.
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The charges were dropped after George Zimmerman agreed to enter an alcohol education program.
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George Zimmerman had previously been employed at a car dealership and a mortgage audit firm.
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George Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College in 2009 and was working on an associate degree in criminal justice.
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George Zimmerman was completing that credit at the time of the shooting.
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In early 2011, George Zimmerman participated in a citizen forum at the Sanford City Hall to protest against the beating of a black homeless man by the son of a white Sanford police officer.
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On February 26,2012, George Zimmerman fatally shot 17-year-old African-American high school student Trayvon Martin in The Retreat at Twin Lakes community in Sanford, Florida.
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George Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch coordinator in his gated community; Martin was temporarily staying there at the time.
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George Zimmerman was taken into custody, treated for head injuries, and questioned for five hours.
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The police chief said that George Zimmerman was released because there was no evidence to refute George Zimmerman's claim of having acted in self-defense.
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The police chief said that George Zimmerman had a right to defend himself with lethal force.
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Six weeks after the shooting, amid widespread, intense, and in some cases misleading media coverage, George Zimmerman was charged with murder by a special prosecutor appointed by Governor Rick Scott.
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In February 2015, the DOJ concluded there was not sufficient evidence that George Zimmerman intentionally violated the civil rights of Martin, saying the George Zimmerman case did not meet the "high standard" for a federal hate crime prosecution.
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Between the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the trial, George Zimmerman gained 100 to 125 pounds in about a 16-month period.
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George Zimmerman weighed over 300 pounds at the trial.
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George Zimmerman's weight was discussed by Fox News and similar media with speculation as to how it might affect the jury's perceptions.
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In 2013, George Zimmerman's estranged wife called 911 to report that George Zimmerman had assaulted her father and was threatening her with a gun.
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In January 2015, George Zimmerman was again charged with domestic assault after allegedly throwing a wine bottle at a different girlfriend.
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On September 9,2014, George Zimmerman was named by police in a road rage incident in which another driver, later named by police as Matthew Apperson, claimed that George Zimmerman followed and threatened him.
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George Zimmerman had explained this to Apperson before Apperson asked if Zimmerman knew he was "wrong for killing that little black boy".
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George Zimmerman lost Apperson after the two stopped at a gas station and George Zimmerman drove off.
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George Zimmerman was grazed by glass and metal shards when the bullet broke through his passenger-side window and was stopped by the metal window frame, causing minor facial injuries from flying glass and debris.
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George Zimmerman flagged down a police officer and was taken to the hospital.
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Apperson maintained that George Zimmerman was the aggressor and that Apperson acted in self-defense.
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George Zimmerman was given a 15-year concurrent sentence for aggravated assault stemming from the same incident.
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In December 2013, George Zimmerman began selling paintings he had made.
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In January 2014, the Associated Press and a Jacksonville, Florida photographer Rick Wilson demanded that George Zimmerman halt the sale of one of his paintings because the news agency asserted it directly copied a photo owned by the AP.
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In late August 2015, controversy centering on George Zimmerman arose when his Twitter profile picture of a Confederate flag "backed by an American flag" became better-known.
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In September 2015, George Zimmerman retweeted a photo of Martin's slain body posted by another Twitter user, who had the caption: "Z-Man is a one man army".
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Several days later, George Zimmerman posted a letter saying that the photo in the original tweet was marked as "sensitive" and was blocked, so he retweeted it because of the text message without seeing the photo.
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In December 2015, George Zimmerman tweeted two photos of a topless woman he claimed was his ex-girlfriend, and accused her of cheating and of the theft of his firearm and money.
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George Zimmerman included her phone number and e-mail address on his tweet.
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On May 11,2016, George Zimmerman posted what was planned to be the auction of the firearm he used to shoot Martin.
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The post, in which George Zimmerman wrote that the gun was "an American Firearm icon", attracted controversy.
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George Zimmerman subsequently explained that the Justice Department had recently returned the weapon to him.
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George Zimmerman said that he had the right as owner to sell it.
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George Zimmerman said the proceeds of the weapon would go to combating the violence against police officers by members of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as "ensure the demise of Angela Corey's persecution career and Hillary Clinton's anti-firearm rhetoric".
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George Zimmerman reposted the firearm on another site, United Gun Group.
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On December 4,2019, George Zimmerman sued the Martin family and others involved in the trial for $100 million on grounds of false evidence and abuse of process.
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On February 18,2020, George Zimmerman filed a defamation lawsuit for $265 million against Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren.
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George Zimmerman was satirized in the South Park episode "World War George Zimmerman", which premiered on Comedy Central in the United States on October 9,2013.