A Delco man who stabbed an Eagles fan during a fight after the Super Bowl was acquitted of attempted murder

A Delaware County man who stabbed a fellow Eagles fan during a violent confrontation after the team won the Super Bowl last year was acquitted of attempted murder and other serious crimes, but convicted of simple assault.

Jeffrey Zimmerman, 38, was spared conviction on the most serious charges he faced by a jury that delivered a late-night verdict Thursday after fours hours of deliberation.

Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark Much, could not be reached for comment about the verdict.

During a two-day trial, Assistant District Attorney Danielle Kitzinger contended that Zimmerman was the aggressor in a confrontation in Prospect Park that left Jason Roman with a slash wound to his forehead.

Kitzinger told jurors that Zimmerman instigated the argument that led to the stabbing and had multiple chances to leave the scene. Instead, she said, he chose to confront Roman and his friends.

But Zimmerman testified that he was acting in self-defense when he pulled out his curved karambit knife. He said he used the weapon as a last resort after Roman and a group of his friends had pinned him to the ground and were attacking him.

“I’m being punched and kicked, I’m pinned down on my back, and I reach for my blade in an attempt to scare them and swing up,” Zimmerman said. “When I came down with the handle, [Roman] did get a scratch on the side of his temple.”

Zimmerman had encountered the group, which included an off-duty police officer, as he was following his girlfriend to her home in Prospect Park after a Super Bowl party.

Roman and his friends were walking in the street as Zimmerman drove by, and he told them to get on the sidewalk. Zimmerman testified that the group insulted him and threw a beer can at his car as he drove off.

A few blocks away, Zimmerman encountered a woman who was sitting in a parked car nearby and who escalated the situation by telling Roman and his friends that Zimmerman was threatening her.

Zimmerman denied that.

Video played during the trial showed that the group caught up with Zimmerman and that both sides continued to argue. During the dispute, Michael Dockery told Zimmerman he would see him later at Zimmerman’s house.

Zimmerman said he perceived that as a threat against him and his three children, and displayed his knife in an attempt to get the crowd to back away from his vehicle.

Dockery, an Upper Darby Police officer who was off-duty at the time, testified he was not threatening Zimmerman, but was instead referring to a police report he planned to file against Zimmerman for threatening him with a weapon.

Zimmerman drove off again, but stopped nearby, worried about what the group had said to him.

“I didn’t want it to get any more out of hand than it already was with the words, but now the thoughts of them coming back to my house, that mob traveling from where they were to now coming to where I live, where my kids reside, that thought that sat in my mind,” he said.

“This has got to stop now,” he said he was thinking at the time. “I gotta go back and really dissolve this whole situation.”

As he got out of his car and walked toward the group, Zimmerman said, he was sucker punched.

Prosecutors contended Zimmerman grabbed Roman by the neck and punched first.

As the two men fought, Zimmerman was knocked to the ground. While on his back, Zimmerman said he felt outnumbered and overwhelmed and pulled out his knife to defend himself.

“I was in fear of my life,” he said. “There was no other thing I could think about at that point aside from trying to get back home to my family.”

Roman let Zimmerman go after being slashed, and other members of the group called 911.

Zimmerman drove away from the scene, intending to go to the nearby police station, he said, but was pulled over by Prospect Park Police Chief Dave Madonna, who testified that he was responding to the reported stabbing.

Zimmerman is scheduled to be sentenced on July 1 by Judge Mary Alice Brennan.