ORLANDO, Fla. – The man who shot Trayvon Martin to death last month had been either a perpetrator or victim of domestic violence -- depending on whether you believe him or his ex-fiancé.
One thing not in dispute: an Aug. 8, 2005, encounter left George Zimmerman, then 21, with scratch marks across his left cheek. He claimed in a petition for injunction that the wounds were inflicted by his enraged ex-fiancé, Veronica Zauazo.
But in her petition -- filed a day before Zimmerman's in Orange County Circuit Court -- Zauzo, then 23, claims the scratches were caused by her dog, which she says attacked Zimmerman as she tried to push him out of her home.
Zauzo said she saw Zimmerman's Volkswagen Jetta in her neighborhood earlier that night and called him to ask why he was there. Zimmerman, she said, claimed "he was checking up on me" and asked if he could talk to her.
She agreed, but after about an hour at her home, she claimed, she asked him to leave but "he insisted on staying."
An argument over a cellphone turned physical, she claimed.
"It became a pushing match. I got my cellphone, then he pushed some more to get him out. My dog jumped up and bit his face on his the cheek. I freaked out and told him to leave. I ran up the stairs and called 911," she wrote.
Zimmerman, though, claimed Zauzo attacked him when he refused to spend the night with her.
"She accused me of going to another woman's house or going to party with my friends," he wrote. "We started arguing and she started to get upset and violent. ... I was heading to the door when she slapped me and told me I was not leaving."
Zimmerman claimed she subsequently "physically assaulted me about the face and upper chest, at one point trying to choke me."
A judge essentially sided with both parties, granting each a one-year injunction barring contact with the other.
Zimmerman did not own or have access to a firearm when the injunctions were filed in 2005, according to court records.
Zauzo claimed that was not Zimmerman's first battery on her.
In November 2002, one year after they met, she claimed she got home from work, awaking Zimmerman, who "was upset because I got home a little later than usual. ... He was sexually groping me and said he could because I was his woman. I told him no, to leave me alone. He picked me up and threw me on the bed. I got up to leave. He grabbed me again, and I turned around and smacked him. Then he got up and left for the night."
No criminal charges resulted from either alleged incident.
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