Originally Posted By: the G-man
 Quote:
Did Zimmerman NEED to chase down Martin? What did he expect was going to come of following him? The end result was violence that could've been easily avoided by following the direction given by the dispatchers and -- dare I say it -- using a little common sense.


Did he 'chase down,' Martin, implying an aggressive running after the young man, or did he quietly follow Martin, implying a less threatening action?


From what I understand of it Zimmerman claims that he wasn't trying to chase him down so much as he was trying to keep track of the direction he went in till the cops got there. However, at some point he pushed his luck and Martin felt threatened enough to backtrack on him.

I'm not sure if the law sees a distinction between that and all the terms that people are coming up with to describe what Zimmerman did. "Follow," "chase," "stalk," "hunt."