An elderly man who confessed to creating a distraction in order to help the gunman who killed Charlie Kirk escape has been hit with additional charges of possessing child sexual abuse materials on his phone.
George Zinn, 71, was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the assassination after yelling that he shot Kirk. He further dared authorities to shoot him before he was taken into custody.
Zinn was initially reported as the suspect in the case, though he was ultimately released after authorities interrogated him and determined that he had nothing to do with the murder. He also did not have a weapon on his person at the time of his arrest.
Zinn was ultimately hit with one count of obstructing justice –- a second-degree felony -– in the wake of Kirk’s killing at Utah Valley University (UVU). He confessed to that crime on Tuesday by telling authorities that he created a distraction in order to help the real killer escape.
He was also hit with additional charges in connection with images on his cellphone depicting child sexual abuse material, authorities said.
Documents filed in Zinn’s case by UVU campus police allege that he began screaming, “I shot him – now shoot me,” in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s murder. Videos of Zinn being restrained circulated widely online, leading many to believe he was the shooter in the immediate aftermath of the assassination.
When asked about his motivation, he claimed that he wanted to create a distraction in hopes that police would kill him and subsequently be drawn away from the real killer. This, in Zinn’s mind, would make him a “martyr” for Kirk.
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He was allegedly reluctant to let investigators look at his phone, saying he used the device “to look at child sexual abuse material”, local sheriff’s deputies wrote in a separate report, according to local outlet KSL. A search of Zinn’s phone allegedly confirmed there were more than 20 images depicting child sexual abuse, including of minors believed to be between 5 and 12 years old, authorities said.
Investigators also recovered additional, explicit messages in which he shared the material with others. Ultimately, authorities arrested Zinn on counts of obstruction of justice linked to the aftermath of Kirk’s killing and sexual exploitation of minors for the alleged content on his phone.
Zinn has a lengthy criminal history relating to bizarre behavior. The most serious charge against Zinn came in 2013, when he was charged with threatening to place bombs at the Salt Lake City Marathon finish line, according to a report from the Salt Lake City Tribune.
Zinn ultimately accepted a plea deal that saw him escape with probation for making the threat, which was issued not long after the Boston Marathon bombing. He was ultimately ordered to jail, with credit for time served, after violating the terms of his probation.
Back in May, Zinn was arrested in the community of Ogden foron a misdemeanor count of “pedestrian in roadway.”
“George stated he didn’t care if the vehicles waited all day. I told George he needed to wait on the sidewalk, and not in the roadway,” a responding officer wrote in arrest documents. “He told me he did not care, and to take him to jail.”
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