A neighbor of George Zimmerman, who had perhaps the best view of the struggle between the neighborhood watch volunteer and Trayvon Martin, testified at Zimmerman’s murder trial Friday that it appeared the teen was striking Zimmerman while straddling him.
However, Jonathan Good said he did not see anyone’s head being slammed into the concrete sidewalk, which Zimmerman has said Martin did.
Zimmerman has claimed that he fatally shot 17-year-old Martin last year in self-defense as the Miami-area teen was banging his head into the concrete sidewalk behind the townhomes in a gated community.
But under prosecution questioning, Jonathan Good said he never saw anyone being attacked that way during the fight between Zimmerman and Martin.
Good, the second person to take the witness stand Friday, said he heard a noise behind his townhome in February 2012, and he saw what looked like a tussle when he stepped out onto his patio to see what was happening.
He said he yelled, “What’s going on? Stop it.”
Good testified he saw a person in black clothing on top of another person with “white or red” clothing. He said he couldn’t see faces but he “could tell that the person on the bottom had a lighter skin color.”
Martin was black and wearing a dark hoodie. Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic and was wearing a red jacket.
Later, under cross-examination, he said that it looked like the person on top was straddling the person on bottom in a mixed-martial arts move known as “ground and pound.” When defense attorney Mark O’Mara asked him if the person on top was Martin, Good said, “Correct, that’s what it looked like.”
Good also said the person on the bottom yelled for help.
During cross-examination, O’Mara got on his knees to recreate the fighting as he asked Good to walk him through it.
Good was in the middle of dialing 911 inside his townhome when he heard a gunshot, he said.
Zimmerman, 29, could get life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. He has denied the confrontation had anything to do with race, as Martin’s family and their supporters have claimed.
Jurors already have been shown some of the state’s biggest pieces of evidence, including the 911 call featuring cries for help prosecutors believe came from Martin.
On Thursday, a friend of Martin who had been on the phone with him when he was shot testified about what she heard during his confrontation with Zimmerman. Rachel Jeantel dominated headlines with her refusal to acknowledge the term “creepy a** cracker” to be racial or offensive, further shocking the audience after saying she couldn’t read a letter she supposedly wrote because it was in cursive script.
