George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, filed a $100 million lawsuit on Wednesday against Martin’s family and others, claiming that they used an “imposter and fake witness” against him during the trial.
Zimmerman’s lawsuit said that “a trial witness pretended to be the last person to talk to Martin by phone before he was killed when the witness was actually the half-sister of the caller,” The Associated Press reported. “According to the lawsuit, Brittany Diamond Eugene didn’t want to testify that she had been talking to Martin before he was killed. So her half-sister, Rachel Jeantel, pretended that she was talking to the teen before he was fatally shot. Jeantel ended up testifying at Zimmerman’s 2013 trial in Sanford, Florida.”
The Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak added that “… Eugene refused to provide the version of events used to build a narrative of racism at trial, so Jeantel, who reads at a fourth-grade level, was pressured into pretending to be ‘Diamond.'”
“Defendant Eugene could in no way be mistaken for Defendant Jeantel, who was 2 years older, 5 inches taller, and about 120 pounds heavier than Defendant Eugene,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit stems from the February 26, 2012, incident when Zimmerman killed Martin, claiming he did so in self defense, and was found not guilty by a jury.
CNN noted that Jeantel testified that Martin told her during the phone that someone was following him in the moments before he was fatally shot.
“As Trayvon neared the home of his father’s girlfriend, he tried to lose Zimmerman, she testified,” CNN reported. “Jeantel said she heard him talking to Zimmerman in the background.”
“He said, ‘Why are you following me for?’ And I heard a hard-breathing man say, ‘What you doing around here?'” Jeantel said. “I start hearing a little bit of Trayvon saying, ‘Get off, get off!'”
CNN added, “She admitted on the stand to lying several times to Trayvon’s family about her age and about her reasons for not attending Trayvon’s funeral.”
The lawsuit alleges: “Defendants (except Harper Collins), each and every one of them, instituted, ordered, commanded, conspired, and covered up the illegal substitution of Defendant Eugene, a legitimate phone witness to the days, hours and minutes before the death of Trayvon Martin, with Defendant Jeantel, an imposter and fake witness, who told a made to order false storyline to prosecutors in order to cause Zimmerman to be arrested, tried, and convicted for second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in a case that had already been investigated and closed by the Sanford, Florida police department, and after they had already exonerated Zimmerman, having concluded Zimmerman had acted in self-defense with no probable cause for arrest based on eye-witness testimony, physical evidence, and 911 audio recordings.”
Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump responded to the lawsuit with a statement on Wednesday, writing: “This plaintiff continues to display a callous disregard for everyone but himself, re-victimizing individuals whose lives were shattered by his own misguided actions. He would have us believe that he is the innocent victim of a deep conspiracy, despite the complete lack of any credible evidence to support his outlandish claims. This tale defies all logic, and it’s time to close the door on these baseless imaginings.”