SANFORD -- With a hoodie-wearing teenager circling his truck, frustrated neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman called police — and then did something that didn’t make sense under Zimmerman’s version of events, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday.

“Why does this defendant get out of his car?” prosecutor Bernardo de la Rionda asked jurors during the first day of closing arguments in Zimmerman’s highly publicized murder trial.

He answered his own question: “Because he’s got a gun. He’s got an equalizer. He’s going to take care of it. He’s a wannabe cop. Police are taking too long to respond. ‘I’m going to take care of it.’”

De la Rionda spent about two hours Thursday poking holes in Zimmerman’s explanations of the confrontation with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, as the racially-charged trial winds to a close. Zimmerman, 29, is charged with second-degree murder for shooting Trayvon in the chest during a scuffle in a gated Sanford community that drew worldwide headlines.

Zimmerman cooperated with police and claimed self-defense. Police did not arrest him for weeks, leading to protests — in Florida and across the country — by Trayvon’s family and supporters of the slain teen.

Zimmerman’s defense attorney will present his closing argument Friday, but prosecutors will get the last word because they split their closing arguments into two sections. Then the case will go to a six-person, all-female jury that has been sequestered for weeks. When a verdict has been reached, the court will let the public and media know via Twitter.

Thursday’s dramatic closing argument by the state came on the 21st day of trial in this Central Florida town, with de la Rionda by turns mocking and histrionic.

He repeatedly wondered aloud how many hands Trayvon would have needed to smother Zimmerman, punch him and reach for his gun, as the defendant claimed in police interviews. At one point, he placed a mannequin on the courtroom floor that had been used as a demonstrative aid throughout the trial, straddling it to help show jurors how the struggle could have occurred.

Zimmerman, he said, had even botched a softball interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity.

“He can’t even get that right,” De la Rionda said.

In the Hannity interview, de la Rionda told jurors, Zimmerman said Trayvon hadn’t really run away that night — as he had claimed in a call to police dispatch shortly before the shooting — as much as he had “skipped.”

Then De la Rionda flailed his arms and skipped before the jury with a sing-song, “tra-la-la.”

The closing argument covered a broad range of points, with de la Rionda contending that Trayvon’s death had its roots in events that came months before, when Zimmerman, frustrated by neighborhood break-ins, organized a neighborhood watch.

That night of the shooting, Trayvon was not breaking the law when he walked to the nearby convenience store to buy Skittles and a soft drink. “He was wearing a hoodie,” de la Rionda said. “Last I heard, that’s not against the law.”

As the prosecutor weaved the evidence into the state’s theory of the case, Trayvon’s mother sat in the courtroom, wiping tears from her face. Trayvon’s father kept his head down.