Evidence that Trayvon Martin Doubled Back

by Dan Linehan on March 29, 2012

Key:

A – The Clubhouse for Retreat at Twin Lakes.
B – Community mailboxes.
C – Where George Zimmerman parked his truck.
D – Brandy Green’s Townhouse, where Trayvon was staying.
E – Zimmerman stopped and completed his 911 call for approximately eighty seconds.
F – The fight and shooting took place in this area.
G – Eyewitness “John’s” townhouse.

Let’s take a look at how events unfolded during the original 911 call Zimmerman made to report Trayvon as a suspicious person.

We can match things up on the map with the 911 call pretty much step-by-step.

0:15 – The best address I can give you is the clubhouse. [A]
0:45 – He’s just staring at the houses. Now he’s staring at me.
1:00 – He’s coming towards me.
1:20 – He’s coming to check me out.
2:08 – Shit, he’s running.
2:14 – Sound of truck door being closed. [C]
2:20 – He’s heading towards the back entrance. [referring to E]
2:25 – Are you following him? Yep.
2:45 – He ran… Zimmerman stops and completes the 911 call. [E]
4:05 – Call ends.

Here’s an estimate of Trayvon’s route back to Brandy Green’s townhouse with 911 call times included:

Martin is initially reported as hanging out near the clubhouse, looking at houses and acting suspiciously. Then he walks by Zimmerman’s truck at around 1:30 on the 911 call and proceeds east.

At 2:08, Trayvon starts running. Six seconds later, we hear Zimmerman leave his truck to see where he went.

While Trayvon runs south towards Brandy Green’s townhouse, Zimmerman continues east, and remains on the line with the 911 dispatcher.

At a slow jogging pace, Trayvon is estimated to have arrived back at Brandy Green’s townhouse at around 2:40 on the 911 call.

Trayvon may have gone inside the townhouse, but it seems more likely that he remained outside to see if Zimmerman was still following him and just continued talking to his girlfriend over the next few minutes.

After a few minutes, Trayvon seems to have walked north, back up the sidewalk to confront Zimmerman about why he was followed.

Here’s an estimate of Zimmerman’s route to the main road with 911 call times included:

George Zimmerman leaves his truck at 2:14 and reaches Retreat View Circle just over thirty seconds later at 2:45.

He agrees to stop pursuit at the dispatcher’s request. After the 911 call is complete, Zimmerman begins to head back to his truck to meet the police. At this point, he claims he was confronted by Trayvon, and walks a few steps down the sidewalk south to respond to him.

As we can see, it appears unlikely that Zimmerman ever “chased down” Martin. Zimmerman only pursued long enough to maintain visual contact to see what direction Trayvon was going.

Zimmerman traveled his entire route in around 30 seconds, he only went a very short distance and did so specifically to tell the 911 dispatcher where Trayvon had gone.

It wasn’t until several minutes later that their altercation took place, when Martin apparently doubled back to confront Zimmerman.

John, the eyewitness who lives in [G], picks up the account from there.