May 7, 2020

The Father and Son Who Shot and Killed Ahmaud Arbery Have Been Charged With Murder

Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were taken into custody Thursday evening.

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News out of Georgia tonight:

On May 7th, 2020, the GBI arrested Gregory McMichael, age 64, and Travis McMichael, age 34, for the death of Ahmaud Arbery. They were both charged with murder and aggravated assault. The McMichaels were taken into custody and will be booked into the Glynn County Jail.

The arrests come only after a devastating video of the February shooting caught the attention of the nation.

Here’s how Charles Blow described it in the Times:

It’s taken from the perspective of a vehicle following a young black man running at a jogger’s pace. The jogger is 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Arbery approaches a pickup truck parked in the street. There are two white men, one outside the vehicle with a shotgun, 34-year-old Travis McMichael, and the other, his father, 64-year-old Gregory McMichael, standing aloft in the flatbed.

The McMichaels had reportedly chased Arbery, blocking his path at another location, at which point he had turned around and jogged another way to avoid them.

In the video, when the men encounter each other, there’s immediately an altercation. Arbery and the younger McMichael fight for control of the shotgun.

Shots are fired. Arbery tries to run away, but he is clearly wounded and his knees buckle. He collapses to the ground. The video ends.

…

The similarities here to the Trayvon Martin case are uncanny. These men stalked Arbery, projecting onto him a criminality of which he was not guilty, then used self-defense as justification to gun him down in an altercation that they provoked. Arbery was killed eight years to the month after Martin was killed, just about three hours north.

You should read his whole column.

Former Vice President Joe Biden had called for justice in the case yesterday.

Hours ago, former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams spoke to Mother Jones about the case.

“What we saw happen in that video, what I read about in those stories, is a violation of every notion of decency and justice,” Abrams said. “It was murder.”

Prosecutors are holding a press conference about the case tomorrow.

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