Gregory and Travis McMichael Arrested in Slaying of Ahmaud Arbery
Ahmaud Arbery protest, screen grab from ABC News.
After a week of increasing outrage after video of the incident surfaced, and nearly three months after the fact, arrests have been made in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
Two men have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault for the February shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested on Thursday and will be booked into the Glynn County Jail.
Cellphone video showing the moment has prompted national outrage since surfacing online this week, but his mother said she can’t bring herself to watch it.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be in a mental state where I can actually watch the video. I had others that watched it that shared what they saw and that just was enough,” Wanda Cooper-Jones told ABC News in an interview that aired Thursday on “Good Morning America.”
In the 28-second video, Arbery, who is black, can be seen jogging around a neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick on a sunny afternoon in late February. The footage ends with two loud gunshots.
Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael, who are both white, told police they grabbed their guns and hopped in their truck to pursue Arbery after seeing him running in their neighborhood, because they believed he was responsible for several recent burglaries. The father claimed his son got out of the truck holding a shotgun and was attacked by Arbery, according to a police report obtained by ABC News.
The two men tussled over the firearm before Arbery was shot, as seen in the cellphone video, which was allegedly taken by a bystander.
Arbery, who lived in Brunswick, one town over from where the McMichaels reside, was pronounced dead at the scene by the Glynn County coroner. No weapons were found on him, according to the police report.
Nearly three months after the killing, no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed in the case.
“I’m managing, it’s really hard,” Arbery’s mother told ABC News Thursday. “It’s really been hard.”
Cooper-Jones said she believes authorities haven’t made any arrests because Gregory McMichael had a lengthy career as an investigator in the Brunswick district attorney’s office before recently retiring.
“I think that they don’t feel like he was wrong because he was one of them,” she said.
After the video circulated on social media Tuesday, a large crowd of protesters marched through the neighborhood where Arbery was killed. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations announced Wednesday that it was opening its own probe into the Feb. 23 incident.
Like everyone else all I know is what I’ve read, and what I saw on that video. Based on the information we have, the McMichaels escalated the situation at every point it could have, and should have, been let go. They armed themselves without good cause, chased an unarmed man on foot in vehicles, made repeated attempts to corner him, then when finally pinned him down and he tried to defend himself, they murdered him.
Every excuse for what the McMichaels did that has so far been proffered are excuses based on circumstances they themselves created. They could have, should have, let him go. They didn’t have any authority or right to chase someone, anyone, down the road. They had no authority to detain anyone at gunpoint. They had no cause or authority to threaten him regardless what they “thought” he was doing.
What Ahmaud Arbery did prior to, or was intending to do afterward, is irrelevant to the decision making of the McMichaels. Ahmaud Arbery was alive in the morning, and dead in the evening, because of a chain of decisions the McMichaels purposefully made. Now, at least, it looks like they will have to answer for it.
May justice be done upon them. Ahmaud Arbery, who would be having his birthday tomorrow had the McMichaels not killed him, is entitled to that much, at least.
Honestly though, the fact it took such a loud public outcry to get prosecutors to act — it’s monstrous.Report
Former cop, doncha know.Report
Yeah I read that. I am, needless to say, unsurprised.Report
But for the video getting out, they might never have been charged at all.Report
Agree completely. the local DA said the day before the video leaked that he was going to refer to a grand jury because the firestorm was slowly building, and Gov. “Let’s Open Georgia Back Up so other people can die” Abbot offered the state’s help – whatever that was supposed to mean. Once the video surfaced it took less then 24 hours for the GBI to charge and arrest these guys.
My guess – after a hung jury trial that takes years to convene because any person of color in the pool will be thrown out by the DA, these guys walk.Report
Just awful. I’ve learned to bite my tongue until all the facts come out but man.. sounds so senseless.Report
Good.Report
Reason has an excellent article on this:
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Wow, 2 months? I assumed this happened the day before yesterday – the day the video hit.Report
Seems like the state’s attorney or DA or whatever they’re called down there really dropped the ball on the transition. Granted if they felt that they needed a grand jury to indict I can see how it would’ve been tough to make that happen with the pandemic. Not sure how charging works in GA.Report
The County DA in the County it happened in is reported to have told officers at the scene not to arrest the suspects who were detained and whom officers reported they believed they had probably cause to arrest. She then formally recused her office from the investigation a couple of weeks later because the father in the pair was a retired investigator in her office and former local police detective.
The state Attorney General then assigned an adjacent County DA to investigate and prosecute and he recused a couple of weeks later after the victim’s mother contacted him with evidence (probably aimed at a wrongful death lawsuit) that his son worked in the original DA’s office. His recusal letter to the state also said he hadn’t found probable cause.
the State Attorney General assigned a third county DA to the case who said the matter should go to a grand jury. That statement was made around the time the video began circulating. But all state court proceedings are suspended in Georgia (in spite of the reopening of the state) until late June, so before a grand jury could be impaneled the Governor asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to intercede.
GBI executed arrest warrants in 36 hours against the two men on capitol murder charges.
I have theories, well informed by being a Southern White Man theories. But your mileage may vary.Report
Any of these things, taken separately or together, might very well be legitimate, and might innocently explain the delay. But I can’t fault the people who brought public pressure merely because it might not, ultimately, have been necessary. There have been too many cases where something like this would have been buried to be confident that this one would proceed on the up-and-up.Report
As always, don’t read the comments.Report
This makes me think of all our discussions about political theories and economic theories, and how they are all predicated on some mechanistic theory of inputs and outputs- i.e., if you have system X, hold all other variables steady, then it will produce outcome Y, always and everywhere reliably.
Except, those other variables are never steady.
We live in a world governed by the Wilhoit Pinciple, where the laws protect one class but do not bind it, and bind another class but do not protect it.
We don’t all live in the same political system. In Texas a woman breaks the law, but because of her tribal affiliations, is released almost instantly by the Governor and the state Supreme Court; In Georgia man is chased and gunned down in the street, and the legal system needs to be shamed by nationwide outcry to reluctantly take action.
We don’t live in the same economic system; In an economic crisis, well connected elites are given VIP concierge service, while everyone else is left to rot.
And as always in our world, your class is determined by a combination of race and wealth.Report
Nailed it.Report
Another example of the unnecessary presence of guns leading to tragedy.Report
Another example of ingrained, systemic white privilege leading to tragedy.Report
White privilege coupled to the privilege of government agents (because former agents in good standing are often still regarded as current agents).Report
That’s how social injustice works, where the underlying racism or misogyny turns every failure against the hated underclass.
Bureaucratic bungling exists, but is particularly acute on the oppressed class;
Police misconduct exists, but is chiefly used against the oppressed class;
Environmental pollution exists, but is pushed to the places where the oppressed class lives;
And the tools by which citizens fight these issues are blunted or ignored when oppressed people try to use them.
Which is why any discussion of one of these issues inevitably gets connected to a discussion of racism or misogyny, since that’s the underlying fuel powering them.Report
It’s weird that you bring up misogyny, when the overwhelming majority of homicides in which a self-defense claim is made, including this particular case, involve male decedents. Wouldn’t misandry be more salient here?Report
95% of people killed by police are men, too. Mike Huckabee got a lot of crap for saying that male lives matter, but he kind of had a point.Report
Its weird that you would bring up the subject of men being violent as a reason not to bring up misogyny.Report
Could you outline your logic here? Black people kill other black people at a per-capita rate at least 50 times greater than the rate at which white people kill black people, so statistically white privilege seems to be an impediment to killing black people.Report
In this case a white former cop thought he had the authority to go chase down a person who he claims matched a burglary suspect – and the most recent burglary reported around him was of his son’s car two months prior.
He took weapons, got his son, also armed, and confronted the “suspect” all without ever calling the police (until after the kid was dead). Then he nearly skated because he was a former investigator in the local DA’s office – who herself is reported to have told local cops not to arrest him even though they felt they had probable cause.
That’s white privilege backed by a systemic racist structure.Report