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George Zimmerman Was Involved in Another Shooting on Monday

It's just the latest bizarre brush with the law for the former neighborhood watchman, who was acquitted in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2013.
George Zimmerman. Photo via Seminole County Sheriff's Office

George Zimmerman is seemingly incapable of staying out of trouble. On Monday afternoon, he was involved in a shooting in Lake Mary, Florida—just one of many run-ins the former neighborhood watchman's had with police since being acquitted in the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Details about Zimmerman's latest brush with the law are scant. Although initial reports said that he was shot in the head, Zimmerman's attorney, Don West, says it's more likely he was cut from a broken car window and has already been released from the hospital. For now, all we know for sure is that someone shot into Zimmerman's vehicle and that the injury seems to have been relatively minor.

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"He walked normally into the ambulance, so he wasn't being helped or nothing," witness Ricardo Berrare told WESH Channel 2. "They actually backed up the ambulance next to his driver side so he could walk into the door."

One would think this guy might try and keep a low profile after becoming a national villain three years ago. Not so. In fact, Zimmerman made headlines only a couple weeks after his initial acquittal in July 2013 when he was pulled over 20 miles east of Dallas for aimlessly speeding (and found with a gun in his glove compartment box).

At the time, a representative from Zimmerman's legal team expressed consternation that people cared about a traffic stop. (He's been pulled over in at least two other traffic incidents since, according to the Associated Press.) But the tucked-away gun foreshadowed a string of bizarre events, often involving weapons. For instance, four months later, Zimmerman was arrested for aggregated battery after his girlfriend called 9-1-1 on him.

"He's in my house, breaking all my shit because I asked him to leave," Samantha Scheibe told the dispatcher. "He's got a freaking gun breaking all my stuff right now." (She later asked that the charges be dropped, and Zimmerman denied wrongdoing.)

In December 2013, Zimmerman made headlines by selling a painting on Ebay for more than $100,000. This verified that pretty much anything Zimmerman does —criminal or otherwise—is going to be a story for the rest of this guy's life.

Last September, he was involved in a road rage incident in which he allegedly told a driver, "Do you know who I am? I'll fucking kill you." (The Associated Press is reporting that the shooting Monday involved the same man—Matthew Apperson—that he addressed in that incident, and cited a police spokesperson saying Zimmerman was not the shooter.) Then came a repeat performance of Zimmerman's scuffle with his girlfriend this January, when she said he threw a wine bottle before recanting the claim.

Two months ago, an Orlando law firm interviewed Zimmerman about his involvement in the death that made him famous in the first place. He used the platform to blast President Obama for igniting racial tensions by inviting the Martin-Fulton family to the White House and asking them to reflect upon the fact that "all children's lives matter."

"Unfortunately for the president, I'm also my parents' child, and my life matters as well," Zimmerman said. "And for him to make incendiary comments as he did and direct the Department of Justice to pursue a baseless prosecution, he by far overstretched, overreached, and even broke the law in certain aspects to where you have an innocent American being prosecuted by the federal government, which should never happen."

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