This morning, George Zimmerman, a local child killer who was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012,
announced that he was going to auction his "iconic" gun used from the incident on Gunbroker.com, only to have the weapon removed minutes after the bidding began.
It's not immediately clear why the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol, which was used to kill an unarmed 17-year-old in Sanford, Florida, was removed from the site.
Zimmerman had planned to start the bidding for $5,000. The auction was supposed to run for 24 hours.
According to
Fox News, Zimmerman was well within his rights to sell the firearm, and the website operators at Gunbroker.com did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
On a related note, in his initial post this morning, Zimmerman claimed that the Smithsonian had shown interest in buying his gun, however
an official statement from Smithsonian said that this is not true.
UPDATE:
According to the
Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman sent the publication a text stating that the first auction website, GunBroker.com, was not "prepared for the traffic and publicity surrounding the auction of my firearm. It has now been placed with another auction house."
The gun is now listed for the same price on another site
UnitedGunGroup.com.
The gun currently has zero bids.