George Zimmerman has been charged by a Florida State’s Attorney with “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly” following and harassing a private investigator, a local TV station reported on Monday. This is but the latest in a long series of legal problems for the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old black teen, back in 2012.
According to a court filing, the 34-year-old Zimmerman threatened the investigator — who was working on a documentary about the 2012 killing — over a total of 55 phone calls, 67 text messages, 36 voicemail messages, and 27 emails. In one text, Zimmerman apparently referenced an article in which he had said, “I know how to handle people who fuck with me. I have since February of 2012.” The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office found that “probable cause exists to show that Zimmerman had in fact used electronic communications to send threatening and harassing communications,” and that the nature of those threats constituted Aggravated Stalking.
Though he was eventually charged, Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013 of murder and manslaughter charges in the Travyon Martin shooting. In a pair of 2013 emails, obtained by ThinkProgress at the time, the chief of police for Lake Mary, George Zimmerman’s Florida home town, agreed that Zimmerman was a “ticking time bomb” and another “Sandy Hook” waiting to happen.
That same year, police responded to claims of domestic abuse and arrested him for a separate incident. The following year, he was allegedly involved in a road rage incident in which he reportedly threatened to kill a man. In January 2015, he was arrested again for assault and domestic violence. In each case, he escaped conviction.