George Zimmerman addresses controversial Trayvon Martin tweet
ORLANDO, Fla. -- George Zimmerman responded Sunday to a controversy involving a tweet he retweeted in connection to the death of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old teen whom he fatally shot in 2012, reports CBS affiliate WKMG.
Zimmerman was acquitted in the February 2012 shooting death of Trayvon, an unarmed black teenager in Florida, in a case that sparked protests and a national debate about race relations.
Zimmerman, now 32, retweeted a photo last week which allegedly included a picture of Trayvon's deceased body. The original tweet also included the caption, "Z-man is a one-man army," according to WKMG.
On Sunday, Zimmerman posted a statement online saying that the photo in the tweet was blocked on his feed, so he did not see it when he retweeted the tweet.
Re: re-tweeting image of deceased attacker, forcing me 2 use lethal force 2 defend my life. http://t.co/qSM3hnyeCN pic.twitter.com/ZheQfqNstT
— George M. Zimmerman (@TherealGeorgeZ) October 5, 2015
In the statement, posted to his Twitter page, he says he was simply retweeting words of encouragement from a supporter.
"I did not, and never will knowingly re-tweet a picture of a deceased body," the statement read in part. "I do not want to see or relive the night I was attacked and had to use lethal force to defend my life."
Throughout the 2013 trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys painted starkly different pictures of the then 29-year-old.
Prosecutors portrayed Zimmerman as a vigilante, frustrated by the break-ins in his community that prompted him to launch a neighborhood watch program.
They said Zimmerman, who had aspirations to be a police officer, profiled the teen as a criminal and shot him "because he wanted to."
Defense attorneys on the other hand portrayed Zimmerman as a concerned community member who was "viciously attacked" when Martin "sucker punched" him and began slamming his head into a concrete sidewalk.