There's another possibility that fits the evidence.
It is possible Zimmerman did not follow Martin but instead hurried to cut him off.
I used to believe this when it was first discussed on the forums way back then, but changed my mind because the timeline just doesn't match.
If you're using Zimmerman's timeline, don't bother trying to get anything to match. The 911 call doesn't match what he told Serino, and neither one matches the walk-through.
I went back to check the discussion at the
old forum archives. The timeline is not dependent on what Zimmerman told the police, it's constrained by the call log between Zimmerman and 311 on one hand, and Jenteal and Martin on the other. I just don't see there being enough time for Zimmerman to cut Martin off
and chase him back towards the T before the fight.
Furthermore, Zimmerman's keys were dropped near the T, which is consistent with his version of events. Not saying that Zimmerman is necessarily telling the truth especially about who confronted whom, but at least based on what we know, it requires less mental gymnastics to assume that he was where he says he was than theories about him running around the neighbourhood.
Except you can hear Zimmerman hot-footing it in the recorded call, so we know he was at least jogging for part of the time.
We can speculate forever about where exactly Martin and Zimmerman went, but in the end we have no way of knowing. We don't know what would appear to them to be the best route to follow, or if either heard one of the neighbors and sped up, slowed down, or changed direction because he thought it was the other, etc. Frankly, there is only one reason to pursue this line of questioning. I call it the Thug of the Gaps argument. The idea is to find a gap big enough to accommodate the claim that Martin attacked Zimmerman in a manner not consistent with self defense and Florida's SYG laws, so that, if we cannot say with certainty where Martin went that night we cannot rule out the possibility, however implausible, that Martin reached the safety of home and then went back out to confront Zimmerman.
Of course, the Thug of the Gaps argument suffers from the same problem it exploits. We don't know exactly where Zimmerman was, either. But we do know he was safe from a fleeing Martin at the outset. We
know he sought a confrontation, or at least created one by his choice to engage in armed pursuit of a teenaged pedestrian who had done nothing to warrant it. So no matter how big a gap you create in the timeline, no matter how well an aggressive teenaged pedestrian Thug might fit into it, Zimmerman fits it better. Everything we know about him, his history and his choices that night, point to Zimmerman being the Thug and Martin being the victim of his thuggery.