Sandy MaloneBrunswick, GA – Police have released video on of the fatal shooting of a 25-year-old Georgia man in the Satilla Shores neighborhood (video below).
Ahmaud Arbery’s family and friends said he was out jogging on Feb. 23 when two men in a pickup truck hunted him down and killed him, WSB reported.
“My kid was murdered,” the victim’s father, Marcus Arbery, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “That’s all I can say. He ran like that every day – all his life. He ran in his neighborhood and that one too. That’s the only place he ever had a problem.”
The police report said the incident began when Arbery jogged past the home of Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, the Associated Press reported.
The McMichaels told police afterwards that they thought Arbery was the suspect in several recent burglaries in the neighborhood, so they armed themselves and followed him, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
No information has been released about why the McMichaels suspected Arbery of burglaries.
The men jumped in their pickup truck and followed the 25 year old as he jogged through the neighborhood.
The video filmed by a witness in another vehicle showed Arbery jogging up the middle of the residential road.
A white pickup truck was stopped in the road ahead of him.
In the video, Arbery dodged to the right onto the grass to go around the stopped truck.
Yelling can be heard in the video for a second, and then a gunshot, just before Arbery reappeared in front of the truck.
The video showed Gregory McMichael standing up in the bed of the pickup with a gun in his hand.
Arbery appeared to engage Travis McMichael, who was holding a shotgun, in a struggle for the gun that drifted off camera for a split second.
While they were off-camera, Travis McMichael’s gun went off – a puff of smoke is visible on the left side of the screen that indicated where the gunshot came from.
The video showed Arbery and Travis McMichael veered back into the frame, still engaged in a struggle over the gun, and then there was a third gunshot.
Arbery took a couple steps away from Travis McMichael and collapsed face-first in the middle of the street, the video showed.
Gregory McMichael got down from the back of the pickup, gun in hand, and was walking toward where Arbery lay on the ground as the video ended.
The police report said he claimed he and his son had called out to the jogger and told him they wanted to talk to him, the Associated Press reported.
Gregory McMichael told police that Arbery “began to violently attack” his son and then the two men fought over the shotgun.
Arbery was shot twice and died.
The police report said that after he was shot, Gregory McMichael said he rolled Arbery onto his back to see if he had a weapon, according to the Associated Press.
The police report did not say whether Arbery was armed during the altercation that led to his death, but there’s no evidence he used a weapon.
No arrests have been made yet because Tom Durden, the outside prosecutor who is handling the case, said he wanted to convene a grand jury, the Associated Press reported.
“I am of the opinion that the case should be presented to the grand jury of Glynn County for consideration of criminal charges against those involved in the death of Mr. Arbery,” Durden said Tuesday in a written statement.
But that cannot happen for more than a month because the Georgia Supreme Court has prohibited grand juries from meeting until after June 12, The New York Times reported.
Durden, who was the third prosecutor assigned to the case, wouldn’t say what charges he planned to have a grand jury consider.
The first two prosecutors who were assigned had to recuse themselves because of professional connections to Gregory McMichael, The New York Times reported.
The older McMichael recently retired from a long career as an investigator for the Brunswick district attorney’s office.
Prior to joining the district attorney’s office, Gregory McMichael was an officer with the Glynn County Police Department for seven years, The New York Times reported.
One of the first prosecutors assigned to the case had said the police didn’t have probable cause to arrest the McMichaels.
Documents obtained by The New York Times revealed that George E. Barnhill, a prosecutor with the Waycross Judicial District who was previously assigned to the case, had argued that both McMichaels had acted legally under the Georgia citizen’s arrest and self-defense statutes.
It’s not clear what evidence would have allowed a citizen to legally detain Arbery.
Barnhill eventually recused himself because his son had worked with Gregory McMichael in the past.
Community activists and attorneys for Arbery’s family are furious that neither of the McMichaels has been arrested yet.
“I think the video is very clear that they were on the truck with guns hunting him down,” Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Marcus Arbery, told the Associated Press. “I don’t know what more you need to make an arrest.”
Crump’s past clients include the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin families.
S. Lee Merritt, another notorious attorney who is representing the family released a statement that said the video showed a murder being committed, The New York Times reported.
“This is murder,” the attorney said. “The series of events captured in this video confirm what all the evidence indicated prior to its release.”
Merritt is known for having represented a number of civil rights clients in cases against law enforcement.
Merritt had previously made false claims against another officer which was disproved by bodycam video in January. After that false claim, Merritt refused to apologize and simply told people that the claims were false.
He was also accused of practicing law without a Texas license.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) announced Tuesday night that Durden had asked the agency to assist with the investigation into Arbery’s death, WSB reported.
Watch the incident unfold in the video below. Warning – Graphic Content: