Does anyone know where I can find a copy of the police saying this:
Zimmerman said he had stepped out of his truck to check the name of the street he was on when Trayvon attacked him from behind as he walked back to his truck, police said.
I contacted the author of the piece. He told me he wasn’t at his computer so he couldn’t access his notes to see exactly where and when this came from the police.
Does anyone else know where and when the police said this?
It’s still up to the discretion of the police. If I call the cops to report that I shot someone in my bedroom, and they come to find my front door smashed open, a guy in all black with a sledgehammer, and me in my pajamas, they aren’t going to arrest me. Nor will I be charged or have to use an affirmative defense at trial.
A few questions: Why not say I’m packing and the police are on their way? How does someone who you’re so afraid of that you won’t give out your address to the dispatcher get near enough to take a swing on you? Why aren’t you fighting back? Concussion symptoms? How do get the gun if he’s sitting on you?
According to an ABC story, the lead detective filed an affidavit (possibly while going after an arrest warrant?) the same night as the killing saying he didn’t buy Zimmerman’s story. Based on that I would say truth.
[ul]
[li]Detective: I’ve got a dead guy and a guy that admits shooting him. Let me arrest him.[/li][li]DA: The guy is claiming self-defense and we don’t any evidence to show he’s lying. Come back when you have some evidence.[/li][/ul]
Seems like a plausible conversation to me.
Or DA: “You don’t have enough evidence right now, and since it’s a Capital case, I’d have to convene a GJ anyway. Is the guy a flight risk? No? Ok, then just wait until we see that the GJ sez. “
Yeah that’s fine. It would be weird not to follow procedure though in terms of questioning, crime scene evidence collection, confiscating the weapon for ballistics, and testing for sobriety.
They questioned him for hours. The stuff you see on the TV show CSI is rarely done IRL, but I have no doubt it was done to a limited extent. Apparently they confiscated the weapon, and there’s no reason to suppose they didn’t test it. They’d need a warrant to do a blood test for sobriety and the on scene investigators did not seem to think it was a issue.
To elaborate on this exchange; a couple of years ago I got a new pellet rifle that’s quicker to load and fire than my Crossman 760, and has 50% greater muzzle velocity, to boot. The first living thing I shot at with it was a squirrel at my bird feeder, shooting out the window. I thought I missed, because the squirrel jumped and ran after I shot, exactly the same way that ones I missed jump and run. Later that day, I had reason to go outside and walk on that side of the house. I found a dead squirrel ~10 feet (roughly 10 to 20 times the squirrel’s body length) away from where it was when I took the shot. By then, it was too late to stew the squirrel, but I wanted to see what my new toy had done, so I essentially did an autopsy on that squirrel. There was an entry wound in it’s chest, right where I had aimed, but no blood on the fur around the wound. Inside the squirrel’s chest cavity, I found hamburger where the heart should be. That squirrel lived without a functioning heart long enough to act like a scared but uninjured squirrel, and long enough to convince me that I had missed it entirely.
How long can you live without an Aorta?
I’d say long enough to act like you still have one and get about 10 feet away from where you lost it. And not even leave a drop of blood to indicate you’d been injured.
When I was a kid, my mom was killing chickens in the back yard. She would grab the chicken by the neck and swing it around until the body came off. I was grossed out by the headless chicken running around. In my book, running around without a head is more impressive than running around without a heart.
Could go either way- as I noted in the Pit thread, I have watched lots of videos featuring the death of actual human beings being shot, and it is surprising how much like marionettes whose strings have been cut they often look. Note that this does not mean they are dead, only that they have collapsed. But if the topic is of that much interest to you, the internet is filled with tons of examples of people being shot, going back to the second world war. Sometimes they stay erect, and lots of times they collapse immediately.
Seems there needs to be an examination of all the circumstances here to establish what might have happened either way because it could go a long way towards proving or disproving Zimmerman’s version of events.
Walk quietly up to someone who has their back turned to you.
Yes, It’s pretty easy to knock someone out on the first blow or knock them to the ground in a daze. I’ve been nearly knocked out with just body contact playing sports.