The known political agitator who falsely confessed to shooting Charlie Kirk while in the audience at the conservative star’s event told investigators that he was trying to “draw attention from the real shooter,” according to a report.
Court records revealed that George Zinn, 71 — a known “gadfly” who was led away from Utah Valley University in handcuffs after the assassination last Wednesday — told cops he was trying to distract them from the real assassin, local station Fox 13 reported.
Zinn approached cops immediately after Kirk was killed and yelled, “I shot him, now shoot me,” the report stated, citing police, who noted that he was unarmed and taken into custody.
During a police interview, Zinn admitted he did not kill Kirk, but confessed to cops he wanted to cause a distraction “to draw attention from the real shooter,” according to court documents reviewed by Fox 13.
The faux shooter made similarly strange and opaque comments after being transported to a local hospital due to a medical condition — saying he “wanted to be a martyr for the person who was shot,” those court papers stated, according to the outlet.
Police said his initial comments delayed the investigation into Kirk’s killing and needlessly took up law enforcement resources at a critical juncture in the probe.
He is charged with obstruction of justice, which is a second-degree felony.
Video from the chaotic aftermath of the assassination at Utah Valley University showed Zinn with his pants around his ankles being dragged away by police as a crowd of college students looked on in horror as he wailed, “Shoot me.”
“He said he shot him, but I don’t know,” one officer told the crowd, which was under the impression that Zinn was the shooter and yelled and swore at him as he went by.
His image spread across the internet with many believing, in the immediate wake of the assassination, that the elderly man with the cleft chin pulled the trigger on Kirk.
Zinn is known locally as a political “gadfly” who frequently pops up at events and is nearly always tossed out with numerous trespassing arrests at events like film festivals, protests, and political rallies.
“Almost every political event you can think of, there was always George somewhere in the background, listening,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“He’s a person who can be odd, and has those kinds of sometimes odd behavior challenges,” said Gill, who has prosecuted Zinn several times. “But by and large, he’s more of a gadfly than anything else.”
In 2013, Zinn threatened to bomb the Salt Lake City Marathon and spent a year in the can for that incident, according to reports.
There is no indication that he knows the apprehended suspect, Tyler Robinson, who was taken into custody last Thursday after his own father turned him in.
Investigators are now looking into a possible “extended network” that possibly “aided and abetted” the college dropout who was living with his male-to-female transgender partner.
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