The family of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery says he was jogging in his neighborhood in Brunswick Country, Georgia in February when he was chased, shot, and killed by two white men.
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Two months later no arrests have been made—though the identity of the men who chased him are known to police, Arbery’s mother said to CBS news.
The prosecutors who have handled the case so far say that Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael acted in self-defense and “within the scope of Georgia’s citizen arrest statute” when they went after Arbery in a chase that ultimately ended with them killing him.
From CBS News:
Arbery was allegedly spotted at a home that was under construction before he began to run. 911 calls came in moments later.
A dispatcher on one 911 call can be heard asking, “and you said someone is breaking into it right now?”
“No, it’s all open, it’s under construction. And he’s running right now. There he goes right now,” the caller says.
The dispatcher then asks what the man is doing and the caller says, “running down the street.”
According to a police report, Gregory McMichael said he saw Arbery run by and recognized him from the break-ins. He and his 34-year-old son Travis McMichael then grabbed a shotgun and a pistol and got into their truck to go after Arbery, the report says.
Once they caught up to him, Gregory McMichael told investigators Arbery “violently” attacked Travis and the two fought “over the shotgun” before Travis shot twice and killed him.
According to neighbors there had been break-ins happening in the area, which seems to be the basis of the citizen’s arrest justification for this young man’s death. But does self-defense include pursuing a person who is jogging, then fighting him when he reacts like any human being would to strangers pointing a shotgun at him, and then killing him with said shotgun?
Sounds more like hunting to me.
“There’s more than enough evidence for a case for murder,” Lee Merrit, an attorney for the deceased man’s family told CBS news.
The lawyer says he suspects no indictments have been made in the case because Gregory McMichael previously worked for the Brunswick district attorney’s office.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is now demanding a federal investigation into Arbery’s death.
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