Zimmerman Gun Auction Sabotaged By Protests
By Associated Press. Bidding in an online auction for the pistol former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon Martin appeared to have been hijacked by fake accounts posting astronomically high bids.
At one point early Friday, the bidding surpassed $65 million with the leading bidder using the screen name “Racist McShootFace.” The site later showed that account had been deleted.
Other screen names of bidders on the site included “Donald Trump,” ”shaniqua bonifa” and “Tamir Rice,” the name of a black 12-year-old who was shot and killed by Cleveland police in 2014 while playing with a pellet gun. Bidding on the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol began at $5,000.
Critics called the auction an insensitive move to profit from the slaying. Zimmerman’s listing said a portion of the proceeds would go toward fighting what Zimmerman calls violence by the Black Lives Matter movement against law enforcement officers, combating anti-gun rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and ending the career of state attorney Angela Corey, who led Zimmerman’s prosecution.