George Zimmerman won’t be charged with domestic violence

George Zimmerman’s most recent brush with the law came to an uneventful end Wednesday when Florida authorities said they would not charge him with domestic violence.

His girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, had called police last month alleging that he pointed a gun at her face. He was arrested and released on bond.

But she recanted her story in an affidavit signed Friday, saying she wasn’t afraid of Zimmerman and wanted the court order that barred him from contacting her lifted.

“I want to be with George,� she said.

In a statement Wednesday, Florida State Atty. Phil Archer in Seminole County said Zimmerman would not be charged. Successfully prosecuting him would be impossible because of “conflicting statements about what occurred,� Scheibe’s failure to cooperate and her new affidavit, Archer said.

Zimmerman, 30, has been in the news since February 2012, when the former neighborhood watch volunteer shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman was acquitted of murder in July.

In September, his estranged wife, Shellie, called 911, saying he had his hand on a gun and had hit her father. She said she feared that he might harm them, and that she had recorded the confrontation with her iPad. The iPad was destroyed during the incident and authorities were unable to recover anything from it. Shellie Zimmerman declined to press charges.

On Nov. 18, Scheibe called 911, saying Zimmerman had threatened her with a gun at her home in Apopka, Fla., according to a search warrant.

In the 911 call, she tells the dispatcher: “He pushed me out of my house and locked me out. … He knows how to do this. He knows how to play this game.�

He was arrested on charges of aggravated assault, battery and criminal mischief, and was released on a $9,000 bond.

Zimmerman pleaded not guilty. According to the search warrant, he told police that he and Scheibe, 27, got into a fight that day because they had agreed to break up and he was moving to Texas.

He said she got angry and started throwing his belongings around, and at one point she picked up a handgun and a shotgun and threw them on the living room floor.

Scheibe’s affidavit aligned with Zimmerman’s version of events. In it, she said that he never pointed a gun at or toward her face, and that she was “overwhelmed and upset� during the incident and “may have misspoken about certain facts in my statement to the police.�

“I want to be with George,� Scheibe wrote in the affidavit. “I contacted George’s attorney to ask if there is any way that the stay-away order can be lifted so that we can talk and be together.�

Scheibe wrote that she was not being pressured by Zimmerman to make the request.

Now that prosecutors aren’t going to charge Zimmerman, the conditions of his bail have been reversed. He no longer has to wear a GPS monitoring device, he can contact Scheibe, and he can carry guns.

Zimmerman’s lawyer, Jayne Weintraub, told the Orlando Sentinel that whether the couple would continue their relationship was a “personal decision,� but that she hoped Zimmerman would be able to return to a normal life.

“For George, I think he has to try and put this whole sequence of nightmares behind him and go forward,� Weintraub said. “He’s young, he’s smart and he’s got his whole life ahead of him.�

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