Man arrested after Charlie Kirk assassination falsely claimed responsibility to allow the attacker to escape.

 

George Zinn arrested at the scene of the crime. BBC.

A man was arrested after the Charlie Kirk assassination falsely claimed responsibility for the attack to allow the attacker to escape. BBC. 71 year old George Zinn was arrested at the scene after yelling "I shot him, now shoot me". Police say that he did this so that the actual assassin, Tyler Robinson, could flee. It is not believed that Zinn knew Robinson in any way and tried to take credit for the attack independently. Zinn was charged with obstruction of justice as well as four counts of possession of child sexual abuse material. Police found 20 images of CSAM on his phone. All five are class B felonies in Utah and could face 1-15 years per charge. Zinn is a minor criminal with a long history of charges, including sending a threatening e-mail to the Salt Lake City marathon after the Boston Marathon bombing. 

My Comment:

Zinn is a very strange case. Supposedly he is a conservative himself, which begs the question as to why he would help the assassin of Charlie Kirk, who is himself conservative. Well it seems as though Zinn was a well known crank that did this kind of thing all the time. He's gotten arrested 25 times, mostly for misdemeanors, and it's for behavior like he displayed during the assassination. 

Zinn strikes me as someone that absolutely should not have been out on the streets at this event. He's made bomb threats, he's been charged with disorderly conduct and he's also been arrested for trespassing. And he's refused to get any mental treatment for his obvious issues. He's going to be put away now, but mostly because he finally got caught in multiple felonies. 

He obviously wasn't colluding with the assassin. He didn't know Tyler Robinson and had no idea that Kirk was going to be assassinated. When it happened he decided, entirely on his own, that he wanted the assassin to get away. He legitimately might have helped do so, as police focused on him after he shouted that he did it. Robinson was able to escape because of this. 

His motivation makes zero sense. Supposedly he said that he wanted to be a martyr for Kirk, but given his actions helped the attacker escape that doesn't follow. Given his obvious mental illness, I wonder if even he doesn't know why he did what he did. Perhaps he wanted to commit a suicide by cop, but there still is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance caused by a conservative/libertarian man helping a far left lunatic commit an assassination. 

The case also reminds me of the other outrage of last week, the murder of Iryna Zarutska by DeCarlos Brown. Both Brown and Zinn were career criminals that absolutely should not have been out on the street. Brown was obviously worse given he murdered someone for no reason, but Zinn too committed multiple felonies, both the false confession that allowed Robinson to escape and the CSAM charges. Again, why on earth are these folks walking the streets? 

The good news is that Zinn is going to be going away for a long time now. He's charged with five felonies and he's probably got the attention of federal police as well. Having CSAM on his phone is going to utterly destroy his chances of getting a favorable jury for the obstruction charge and I am guessing he will die in prison given his advanced age and severity of his charges. He won't ever get the chance to do this again.