The witnesses in the Trayvon Martin case have changed their stories regarding what they saw the night Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, who has claimed self-defense since the night of the shooting. The shooting took place on February 26 in a gated community in Florida. It has been reported that four witnesses, when interviewed a second time in March, changed their accounts of that night significantly. The statements made by the witnesses were included in evidence released to the public last week by the State Attorney’s Office.
The Sentinel reported the following about Witness 2:
“A young woman who lives in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community, where Trayvon was shot, was interviewed twice by Sanford police and once by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
She told authorities that she had taken out her contact lenses just before the incident. In her first recorded interview with Sanford police four days after the shooting, she told lead Investigator Chris Serino, “I saw two guys running. Couldn’t tell you who was in front, who was behind.”
She stepped away from her window, and when she looked again, she “saw a fistfight. Just fists. I don’t know who was hitting who.”
A week later, she added a detail when talking again to Serino: During the chase, the two figures had been 10 feet apart.
That all changed when she was reinterviewed March 20 by an FDLE agent. That time, she recalled catching a glimpse of just one running figure, she told FDLE Investigator John Batchelor, and she heard the person more than saw him.
‘I couldn’t tell you if it was a man, a woman, a kid, black or white. I couldn’t tell you because it was dark and because I didn’t have my contacts on or glasses. … I just know I saw a person out there.’”
On March 20, Witness 12 was interviewed and said that she ‘didn’t know which one’ had the upper hand in the conflict. Then, just six days later, the witness said that for sure it was Zimmerman on top during the fight. Witness 6 told police the night of the shooting that Martin was on top of the fight “just throwing down blows on the guy, MMA-style.” Witness 6 also said that Zimmerman was screaming for help during the altercation but then said he was not sure who was screaming for help just three weeks later.
Police were told by witness 13 that he saw Zimmerman with ‘blood on the back of his head.’ The witness claims that Zimmerman told him that Martin “was beating up on me, so I had to shoot him.” The witness was interviewed twice after that night and in those interviews said that the demeanor of Zimmerman was easygoing, such as, “… More like, ‘Just tell my wife I shot somebody’ like it was nothing.”