man who says he saw Trayvon Martin shot dead claims that the Florida teenager and his killer, George Zimmerman, were scuffling on the ground at the time with one on top of the other.
The first eyewitness account of the 17-year-old’s final moments emerged on Thursday night more than a month after the boy lost his life in an altercation with a neighbourhood watch leader in a gated community in Sanford.
The anonymous man said he reported to police details of what he saw on the evening of 26 February, which included watching the gunman walking away from the fight apparently uninjured.
It contradicts an allegation from Zimmerman’s father earlier in the day that the unarmed black teenager broke his son’s nose during the incident and also left him with bloody injuries from slamming the man’s head repeatedly on to a concrete pavement. The eyewitness says he saw no blood and that the entire confrontation took place only on grass.
“I saw two men on the ground, one on top of the other. I felt they were scuffling and I heard gunshots which to me were more like pops,” he said in an interview broadcast on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, his voice disguised to protect his identity.
“I don’t know if was an echo but it definitely made more than one pop.
“After the larger man got off there was a boy, obviously now dead, on the ground facing down.
“It was dark. I can’t say I watched him get up, but in a couple of seconds or so he was walking towards where I was watching and I could see him a little bit clearer. It was a Hispanic man. He didn’t appear hurt or anything else. He just kind of seemed very worried with his hand up to his forehead.”
The man said that before opening his window and looking out, he had heard angry voices outside. “There was a loud, predominant voice. I couldn’t hear the words but this is not a regular conversation,” he said. “This is someone aggressively yelling at someone.”
He said there was a lull but the argument resumed and that was when he decided to see what was going on.
“I’m thinking something horrible is happening. I heard the yell for help and another excruciating kind of a yell, it didn’t even sound like a yell, it sounded so painful,” he said.
The Sanford Police Department, which has been criticised for not arresting Zimmerman, 28, would not confirm the witness’s account, referring questions to the office of Florida state attorney Angela Corey, appointed last week to oversee the case.
