Following up on a story from this weekend, it looks like filmmaker Spike Lee gave out the wrong address when he targeted Sanford neighborhood watch member, and the world’s most famous “white Hispanic,” George Zimmerman for vigilante retribution.
Kerry Picket of the Washington Times took a drive to the address Lee gave out, and discovered it’s not even part of the now-famed gated community where Zimmerman used to live. It looks as if Lee couldn’t be bothered to Google it.
Instead, it’s a lakeside house apparently occupied by an entirely random woman, whose life Spike Lee may have put in danger. At the very least, when squads of New Black Panthers, the New Black Liberation Militia, or free-lance Boba Fetts hoping to collect the bounty placed on Zimmerman’s head arrived at this address, everyone involved would have been needlessly surprised and embarrassed.
Picket noted that several other news agencies went looking for the address, but strangely enough, she appears to be the first one to file a report.
Update: The story gets worse. According to NewsCore, the couple Spike Lee targeted are elderly, 70 and 72 years old. They've been forced to flee from their home, since they "have been harassed with hate mail, been hassled by media and had scared neighbors questioning them since the tweet." They're now living in a hotel.
Apparently Lee never bothered to check the address. He got it from someone else, who selected this random elderly couple based on the woman having a son named William George Zimmerman, who lived with them briefly at the house over 15 years ago:
William Zimmerman said he used his mother and stepfather's address to register a car, get a drivers license and vote when he lived there after college.
"This is really scary, and I'm concerned for my family," William Zimmerman said. "It's scary because there are people who aren't mentally right and will take this information and run with it.
"To endanger people who are innocent because people are angry is not the answer. That's not how we're going to heal. It's not [going] to help the Martin family for someone else to be hurt."
Update: By the way, Spike Lee is a HUGE Obama donor. According to CBS News, Lee hosted a gala $38,500-per-plate fundraiser for Obama as recently as January. Is there any point in asking for Obama to "do the right thing," and return Lee's donations? Or would this only be a big deal if Lee had called the elderly woman he accidentally targeted for violence a "slut?"
