Surveillance video of George Zimmerman arriving at a Sanford, Fla. police station indicates what may be an injury to the back of his head, a Daily Caller analysis shows.
ABC News published the video Wednesday evening. Zimmerman is the man who shot and killed 17-year-old black teen Trayvon Martin a month ago. (RELATED: Full coverage of the Martin shooting)
“A police surveillance video taken the night that Trayvon Martin was shot dead shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman,” ABC News reporter Matt Gutman wrote, noting that Zimmerman told police “he shot Martin after he was punched in the nose, knocked down and had his head slammed into the ground.”
ABC News reported that Zimmerman appears uninjured in the video. But a still image from the video indicates what appears to be a vertical laceration or scar several inches long.
ABC did note that at the 49-second mark in the video, one of the police officers accompanying Zimmerman stops to look at the back of Zimmerman’s head for several seconds. Zimmerman, as ABC News noted, did not visit the emergency room after police interviewed him.
The Orlando Sentinel’s Rene Stutzman reported on March 26 about portions of what Zimmerman told police during that interview.
“With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered,” Stutzman reported, relating the account Zimmerman reportedly gave police that night.
Zimmerman’s lawyer, Craig Sonner, is reported to have said his client felt, at that point, like “one of them was going to die that night,” so he pulled the trigger, shooting and killing Martin.
At the scene of the incident, according to a three-page preliminary police report, Zimmerman was given “first aid” by Sanford Fire Department paramedics. It is unclear what that treatment consisted of, and how much time elapsed between the paramedics’ intervention and Zimmerman’s arrival at the Sanford Police Department.
Martin’s family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, appeared on television almost immediately after ABC News released the video, telling CNN’s Piers Morgan that the footage is a “smoking gun.” Crump added that it shows the Sanford Police Department’s version of events is a “fabrication” and that “it’s obvious to us that there was something that night they conspired to cover up.”
Watch the police surveillance video:
