George Zimmerman: "I Didn't Want to Confront Him and It Wasn't My Job"

Impact
ByGabriel Grand

On Monday, the members of the jury of the George Zimmerman case were shown a recording of an interview between police investigators and Zimmerman taken on February 29, 2012, three days after the shooting.

In the video, lead detective Chris Serino tells Zimmerman, "You basically jumped out of the car to see where he was going. That's not fear." The jury watched the videotaped interview as Serino testified on Monday afternoon.

"Did you ask what this person was doing out there?" Serino asks Zimmerman on the tape. "No sir. I didn't want to confront him and it wasn't my job," Zimmerman responds.

In the interview, Serino was joined by Detective Doris Singleton, who repeatedly questioned Zimmerman about whether or not he thought Trayvon Martin was afraid of him. "Can you see how that might frighten him, you'd been following him? Do you think he was scared? Do you think he thought you were trying to hurt him?" she asks in the video.

Both Serino and Singleton took the stand to testify on Monday. In court, the prosecution attempted to paint Zimmerman as an unreliable witness, pointing to inconsistencies between Zimmerman's statements.

In its cross-examination of Serino and Singleton, defense attorneys got both detectives to agree that Zimmerman was cooperative with police following the shooting, and that the discrepancies in his various accounts of events could be expected of a person who had just undergone a traumatic experience.

“Most people don’t tell you the same story the exact same way two times,” Singleton testified.

Detective Serino took the stand again on Tuesday morning to resume testimony.