I heard the tape. He does not sound angry.
No, "pursuing" and "following" are not interchangeable.
You left out the part about Martin having burglary tools in his backpack.
What's interesting is Zimmerman said he looks like he's on drugs, and Martin had smoked weed.
I never said angry I said very irritated, using the expletives "f@cking punks" and these "@ssholes" shows the hostility he had towards a teenager he knew nothing about and had never met.
OK lets drop the word pursue(as makes little difference). We know from the 911 transcript he was following Trayvon.
Apparently Trayvon's school found him with a screwdriver and jewellery but it is stated he received no punishment for this, I'm quite sure if they suspended him for graffiti, truancy and possession of a weed pipe, he surely would have been given some kind of formal punishment and the police would have been involved had it been established he was actually involved in burglary.
The fact he said he thought Trayvon was on drugs actually makes it worse for him.
It all points toward Zimmerman being an unstable character, his hostility towards someone he doesn't know, his decision to follow a stranger he thinks looks high on drugs.
A reasonable person with no formal police training would have listened to the dispatcher's advice not to follow Trayvon and would have waited by their car until the police arrived.
And if it can be established that he was not acting reasonably in the build up to Trayvon's shooting, why should anyone believe he was acting reasonably when the actual shooting took place.