After George Zimmerman’s possibly violent confrontation with his estranged wife Shellie at the Lake Mary, Fla., home they once shared, law enforcement authorities say they don’t believe they will be able to obtain any evidence from the iPad she was using to record the incident because she says George smashed it so badly.
If they don’t have any evidence of violence, no witnesses and neither side is willing to press charges, officials say there’s not much they can do.
“We have concluded the investigation with what we have to work with right now,” Lake Mary police spokesman Zach Hudson said.
If they are ever able to get information from the iPad or new evidence surfaces, the investigation could be revived, Hudson said.
The incident occurred on Monday, after Shellie had filed divorce papers against George and called him verbally abusive and selfish in an interview aired on ABC.
According to a police report, it all started when Shellie Zimmerman, accompanied by her father and a friend, was removing belongings from the couple’s house, which is owned by Shellie’s parents. George Zimmerman, who still lives there, arrived and began taking photos of her.
Zimmerman claimed she was “taking property that was not agreed upon and he began taking pictures and recording the items,” the report said.
When Shellie Zimmerman took out her iPad and started recording her husband taking photos of her, George Zimmerman went in the house and locked the front door.
Shellie Zimmerman told investigators she heard her father, David Dean, screaming from the garage and he told her Zimmerman had hit him in the face, the report said. She said her husband then smashed her iPad. When she called 911, she told police that George Zimmerman was threatening her and her father with a gun, but later told police she had not seen a gun.
Police said they did not find a gun, but that David Dean “did have a swollen red mark on the bridge of his nose.”
At a news conference late Wednesday, Shellie Zimmerman’s attorney, Kelly Sims, defended his client’s initial assertions that her husband was armed.
The lawyer said Shellie Zimmerman found packaging for a new holster in the trash that day and has always known him to carry a gun.
“Bottom line, Shellie had every reason to believe there was a gun,” Sims said.
“The only thing Shellie wants out of the end of this relationship is for it to end with a whimper and not a bang,” Sims said.
But according to the police report, George Zimmerman told investigators his wife had told him she had finished picking up her belongings, so he locked the front door and went to the garage to close it when Dean confronted him.
Dean threw down his glasses and charged at him and Shellie Zimmerman at some point hit him with her iPad, George Zimmerman told investigators.
But when police officers asked George Zimmerman to remove his shirt so they could see if there were marks on his back, “there were no signs of trauma, redness or marks of any kind in the area where he said he was struck,” the report said.
Though there were as many as seven people at the house, they said they didn’t see what happened, Hudson said. Footage from house surveillance cameras was inconclusive. Neither side is pressing charges, but Florida law does allow police officers to arrest someone for domestic violence without the consent of the victim.
Hudson said Wednesday it could be several weeks or months before the video can be analyzed – and even then they aren’t making any promises because they don’t have the tools to do it. He said the iPad’s chip also suffered some damage.
Lake Mary is about seven miles southwest of Sanford, where George Zimmerman, 29, killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February 2012.
In another development concerning that case, Shiping Bao, the medical examiner who testified during Zimmerman’s trial and who was fired last week for unknown reasons, said through his attorney Willie Gary that he would file a $100 million lawsuit against the county, according to WFTV 9.
Gary said Bao was bullied by the Sanford Police Department, whose officers were all biased against Martin.
“He says their general attitude was that he [Martin] got what he deserved,” Gary told Channel 9, who said Bao was made to be a scapegoat and was wrongfully fired from the medical examiner’s office.
Gary said his client was prepared to offer proof that Martin was not the aggressor.
“He was, in essence, told to zip his lips. ‘Shut up. Don’t say those things,’” Gary said, who added that prosecutors never asked Dr. Bao a question crucial to their case.
“He wanted a question that would have allowed him to explain to the jury with scientific evidence how there was no way Trayvon Martin could have been on top of George Zimmerman,” Gary said.
