George Zimmerman: 'I certainly was a victim'
George Zimmerman says he wishes he had stayed home on Feb. 26, 2012, the night he fatally shot Trayvon Martin, and that he is sorry for the Martin family's loss. But Zimmerman still maintains he was a victim.
"I certainly was a victim when I was having my head bashed into the concrete and my nose broken and beaten," Zimmerman told CNN's Chris Cuomo in an interview that aired Monday. "I wouldn’t say I was not a victim."
Zimmerman told Cuomo he thinks of "everyone involved" when he reflects on that fateful night.
"I think my life would be tremendously easier if I had stayed home," Zimmerman said. "He probably wouldn’t have ended up attacking me either if I would have stayed home."
But he said he is not haunted by that night, either.
Why not?
"I don't know," Zimmerman said.
The former neighborhood watchman said he is "equally disgusted" with people who support his killing of a young black man and with those painting him as a racist.
Zimmerman, who was acquitted of second-degree murder charges in the killing of Martin, said he wants to become an attorney "to stop the miscarriage of justice that happened to me from happening to somebody else."
"I don’t think it should happen to anyone ever again, not one person," he said.
Earlier, Cuomo asked Zimmerman if he regrets killing Martin.
"Unfortunately the Department of Justice is conducting a civil rights investigation," Zimmerman said. "So those are the types of questions that because of the investigation, I have to tread lightly and I can’t answer them."
Zimmerman was also asked if he thought that, had he not pursued Martin, both he and the teenager would still be alive.
"That’s a presumption I can’t make," Zimmerman said. "I don’t know what would have happened. I could have gotten in a car accident when I left, you know?"
In a separate interview with Univision, Zimmerman said that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and lives in a constant state of fear. Zimmerman told CNN he still receives death threats.
"I have a lot of people saying that, you know, they guarantee that they're going to kill me and I'll never be a free man," he said.
