Police said the pair had lived together since August, one month after Zimmerman’s acquittal of the murder of Trayvon Martin

George Zimmerman was being held without bail in a Florida jail on Monday after a domestic disturbance in which he allegedly pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend, assaulted her, and then barricaded himself inside their house.

Deputies from the Seminole county sheriff’s office arrested Zimmerman, 30, at lunchtime after they were called to a rented property in Apopka that he shared with the woman, Samantha Scheibe, 27.

At an afternoon press conference, chief deputy Dennis Lemma said he thought the pair had lived together since August, one month after Zimmerman’s controversial acquittal for the 2012 murder of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, but that today’s violent episode was apparently caused by the couple breaking up.

“I don’t know exactly what the argument was about, we believe it was some kind of separation from the relationship,” Lemma said.

“She was concerned for her safety, certainly from having the weapon pointed at her. She’s shaken up over this incident, like any of us would be.”

Zimmerman, Lemma said, was charged with aggravated assault, battery with domestic violence and criminal mischief. He was booked into Sanford’s John E Polk correctional facility to await an appearance before a judge on Tuesday afternoon.

If granted bail then, Lemma added, the sheriff’s office would seek to have him monitored electronically, “an extra step we ask for in any domestic violence case in Seminole County,” he said.

The Seminole county sheriff’s office later released recordings of two 911 calls made during the incident, which appear to be from Scheibe and Zimmerman.

In the first a woman tells dispatchers: “I need police right now. He’s in my house breaking all my things because I asked him to leave. He has his frickin’ gun, breaking all of my stuff right now.”

She then tells an unidentified person with her: “Get out of my house, do not push me out of my house.”

Later in the call she tells the dispatcher: “He knows how to play this game” and “I don’t think he’s got anything to lose at this point.”

According to the arrest report, also released later on Monday, Scheibe said Zimmerman used the butt of his shotgun to smash a glass-top table and said he had four weapons in the house: an assault rifle, the shotgun and two handguns.

In what seems to be his own 911 call made from inside the house, as deputies spoke to Scheibe outside, Zimmerman said his girlfriend “for lack of a better word, has gone crazy on me”. Asked why he was calling for help when officers were already at the scene, he replied: “I just want everyone to know the truth.”

He claimed it was Scheibe who broke the table because she became mad when he said he was willing to leave her, and that she had told him she was expecting the couple’s baby but wanted to raise their child alone.

Lemma, the sheriff’s office chief deputy, said at the afternoon press conference that Scheibe was not pregnant.

The incident is the latest in a series of recent brushes Zimmerman has had with law enforcement since he was found not guilty in July of murdering Martin, 17, in a confrontation at a Sanford housing development in February last year. That case prompted furious national debate over race, civil rights, gun ownership and self-defence, not least because Zimmerman was not arrested until 44 days after the killing.

Lemma said on Monday that Zimmerman and Scheibe “had a verbal altercation that resulted in him breaking a glass table in the living room, retrieving a shotgun, and pointing it at her.” He said she ran outside to call 911 but that Zimmerman pushed her out of the door when she tried to get back in.

At that point, he said, Zimmerman placed furniture against the door, but officers were able to gain entry with a key Scheibe gave them. “Deputies were able to open the door [and] push away the furniture that was barricading the door,” Lemma said.

“He offered no resistance to deputies. They made a determination that they had probable cause for George Zimmerman’s arrest. At that time he was unarmed.”

No weapons had been recovered, he said, but that the sheriff’s office was seeking a search warrant.

Zimmerman’s volatile temperament stretches back to at least 2005, when he was ordered to attend anger management classes after allegedly attacking an undercover police officer. In another episode that year, a former girlfriend filed for a restraining order against him, citing domestic violence.

In September, Zimmerman was handcuffed and questioned by detectives following a domestic dispute with his estranged wife Shellie, who called 911 to report that he was threatening her and her father with a gun at her parents’ house in Lake Mary.

Shellie Zimmerman, who had recently announced her decision to divorce her husband of six years, ultimately decided not to pursue charges over the incident, despite saying she felt in fear of her life and that he had destroyed an iPad in a fit of rage. But in an interview with NBC, she said her husband believed himself to be “invincible,” called him “selfish” and accused him of making “reckless decisions”.

At the same time, Steve Bracknell, the Lake Mary police chief, agreed with the author of a series emails sent to him by a local resident who said he believed Zimmerman was “a ticking time bomb” and “a Sandy Hook waiting to happen”.

Zimmerman’s month-long trial for the second-degree murder of Martin, for which he could have been jailed for at least 25 years, ended with a not guilty verdict from a panel of six female jurors. It sparked protests in cities across the country and outrage from the leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

Prosecutors argued that Zimmerman, of mixed white-Hispanic parentage, profiled then pursued Martin as the young man walked through the Retreat at Twin Lakes housing development with sweets and a soft drink he had just bought at a convenience store. The defendant, they said, believed Martin was a criminal “who was up to no good” and that an angry Zimmerman “equalised” him when he fired the single shot to the chest that killed him.

However, Mark O’Mara, Zimmerman’s then lawyer, argued successfully that his client was defending himself during a violent confrontation started by Martin. The case also led to a review of stand-your-ground laws, which remove a person’s obligation to retreat when faced with the threat of violence.

Since the trial, Zimmerman has had several other encounters with law enforcement. In July, he was stopped for speeding in Texas, telling an officer he had a gun in the glove box. He received a $256 fine for speeding in Lake Mary two months later, and was stopped by Florida State troopers in another incident and let off with a warning for having windows in his pick-up truck that were too heavily tinted.

Also, in an appearance that O’Mara’s spokesman called ill advised, he posed for photographs with employees at a factory owned by firearms manufacturer Kel-Tec, the make of handgun he used to kill Martin.