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25-Year Old Black Man Killed While Jogging Because He “Looked Like A Suspect” — No Charges Filed!

Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year old unarmed Black man from Brunswick Georgia, was report­ed­ly shot and killed by two white men as he jogged through their neigh­bor­hood. The inci­dent hap­pened back in February, but no charges have yet been filed.
It was February 23rd to be exact when 64-year old Gregory McMichael and his 34-year old son Travis report­ed­ly grabbed their shot­gun and fol­lowed Ahmaud in their truck after they saw him run past them. Both claimed that Ahmaud “looked like a sus­pect” in a string of rob­beries in the area.

Gregory, who is a retired inves­ti­ga­tor in the District Attorney’s office, said he asked Ahmaud to “stop” so they could talk. The sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed, and lat­er there was an alleged strug­gle with the McMichael’s. Ahmaud was shot at least twice.
Some wit­ness­es said Ahmaud, who was wear­ing a white t‑shirt on that day, was only exer­cis­ing. However, a 911 call from a near­by neigh­bor ear­li­er that day report­ed a Black man in a white t‑shirt who is “run­ning right now” from a house that was under con­struc­tion. Brunswick NAACP pres­i­dent Rev. John Davis Perry II said the shoot­ing is “trou­bling,” caus­ing oth­er peo­ple in the area to express con­cerns about the com­mu­ni­ty and racial profiling.

Meanwhile, a pros­e­cu­tor argued that the father and son who killed Ahmaud were jus­ti­fied due to the citizen’s arrest statute in Georgia. Travis, who was actu­al­ly hold­ing the shot­gun, is said to have act­ed out of self-defense.
The pros­e­cu­tor, who has since been recused from the case due to a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est, not­ed that Ahmaud had a crim­i­nal record. In 2018, he was con­vict­ed of shoplift­ing and vio­lat­ing pro­ba­tion, and he was indict­ed for report­ed­ly tak­ing a hand­gun to a high school bas­ket­ball game.
Neither Gregory or Travis McMichael have yet been charged or arrest­ed in con­nec­tion to the killing. Another pros­e­cu­tor from a dif­fer­ent coun­ty will deter­mine whether the case should be pre­sent­ed to a grand jury.

“We can’t do any­thing because of this coro­na stuff,” Arbery’s moth­er Wanda Cooper told the New York Times. “We thought about walk­ing out where the shoot­ing occurred, just doing a lit­tle march, but we can’t be out right now.”