George Zimmerman testified in the trial of road rage shooting suspect Matthew Apperson on Tuesday, saying Apperson shot at him during a traffic encounter in 2015.
“I heard a bang and my ears started ringing,” Zimmerman told jurors in the attempted second-degree murder trial for the suspect, The Associated Press reported.
Zimmerman, 32, said he was driving to a doctor’s appointment when the traffic encounter began as he noticed that he was being pursued by Apperson’s vehicle and that the suspect later pulled up, exchanged words with him and then fired a gunshot at him that missed, the AP noted.
According to CBS News, Zimmerman also testified that Apperson asked him whether he remembered him before mentioning that he didn’t press charges against him earlier “because I wanted to kill you myself.”
Zimmerman became widely known in the Trayvon Martin case, in which Zimmerman was on trial for first-degree murder, claiming self-defense in the 2012 shooting death of Martin, who was 17 years old at the time. Zimmerman was acquitted in that trial, which sparked protests nationwide and created a national debate about race relations. Zimmerman is Hispanic, and Martin was black.
The traffic incident between Zimmerman and Apperson took place in May 2015, but was not their first encounter, CBS News reported. Apperson said that in September 2014, Zimmerman threatened him in another road-rage encounter, which is the incident Apperson refered to when saying that he elected not to press charges.
Apperson’s attorney, Michael LaFay, said that Zimmerman was the aggressor, not Apperson, and that it was Zimmerman who “brandished a gun in both incidents,” CBS News noted.
The trial began Tuesday in the Seminole County Courthouse and is set to continue Wednesday.
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