ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The estranged wife of George Zimmerman said Thursday she thinks her husband has unraveled since he was acquitted in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.
“I don’t know who George is anymore,” Shellie Zimmerman said on Katie Couric’s show “Katie.” After his murder trial, he became unpredictable and “a pacing lion.”
“I like to think I married a person who was a good person, and going through the past year and a half, I don’t know how that changes a person, or how a person’s spirit breaks, but it certainly seems that’s what happened to him.”
Later, she said: “He does seem like a ticking time-bomb.”
Shellie Zimmerman said she doesn’t think her husband intended to kill the 17-year-old Martin in February 2012. He has said he fired in self-defense.
Martin was an unarmed black teenager and his death set off protests nationwide by people who believed he was racially profiled by Zimmerman. Shellie Zimmerman said she did not think her estranged husband is racist.
Zimmerman’s public defender Jeffery Dowdy said he wouldn’t comment on Shellie Zimmerman’s statements or interviews.
Since his trial, Zimmerman has had several brushes with the law, including an arrest this week on charges that he threatened his girlfriend with a gun. His attorneys say he will be acquitted.
In September, just roughly two months after his acquittal, Zimmerman was accused by Shellie Zimmerman of smashing an iPad during an argument at the home they had shared. Shellie Zimmerman initially told a dispatcher her husband had a gun, though she later said he was not armed.
No charges were ever filed against either one because of a lack of evidence and Shellie Zimmerman didn’t want to file charges. The dispute occurred days after she filed divorce papers.
Shellie Zimmerman told Couric that she ultimately decided not to pursue charges because she feared it could jeopardize her probation. She pleaded guilty in August to a perjury charge for lying during a bail hearing after her husband’s arrest. She was sentenced to a year’s probation and 100 hours of community service.
Shellie Zimmerman wasn’t home on the night Zimmerman shot Martin. She went to her father’s house the night before because she said Zimmerman had humiliated her publicly after she complained about not feeling well when they were out.
“I do wish that the night before when I had left … that he had just let me go and didn’t call me back into his life and that I didn’t play the role I played as a supportive wife,” she said. “Because my life would be very different now.”
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