A retweet from director Spike Lee has an elderly couple in Florida worried about staying safe in their own home, the Smoking Gun reported.
The tweet, sent to Lee on Friday afternoon by Marcus D. Higgins (@maccapone), contained the purported home address of George W. Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month.
Lee has 240,000 followers on Twitter.
“EVERYBODY REPOST THIS,” read the tweet, which Higgins sent at a spam-like rate to many of the people who tweeted about Martin’s death last week. “George W. Zimmerman 159 Edgewater Circle Sanford, Florida 32773.”
Higgins, however, failed to recognize that the George Zimmerman he referenced is not the same George W. Zimmerman who once held residence at 159 Edgewater Circle.
According to the home’s residents, 72-year-old David McClain and his wife Elaine, 70, George W. Zimmerman has not lived at that address in the past seven years. (Elaine was previously married to a Zimmerman, and George W. is her son.)
When informed that Lee’s retweet was the reason why so many individuals had come upon her address, Elaine McClain reportedly told the Smoking Gun, “Maybe we should get a lawyer and send a cease and desist letter to Spike Lee.”
Lee has deleted Higgins’s tweet from his timeline but remains one of the most outspoken voices in the fight for justice in Martin’s death. On Sunday, Lee retweeted over 150 tweets related to the killing.
Update: Spike Lee posted the following message on Twitter on March 29: “I Deeply Apologize To The McClain Family For Retweeting Their Address.It Was A Mistake.Please Leave The McClain’s In Peace.Justice In Court.”
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