All three defendants in the Ahmaud Arbery case have pleaded not guilty to murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment.
A group of men chased a black jogger – with one warning « I’ll blow your f****** head off! » – because they assumed he had committed a crime, a court has heard. Ahmaud Arbery was pursued for five minutes by the group before being shot dead near Brunswick, Georgia, on 23 February 2020. A phone video of the killing sparked outrage, and jurors were told on Friday that Mr Arbery had given the group no reason to suspect him of anything. « They assumed that he must have committed some crime that day, » prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told the court. « He tried to run around their truck and get away from these strangers, total strangers, who had already told him that they would kill him. And then they killed him, » she said. The 25-year-old was chased by Greg McMichael,65, and his son Travis McMichael,35, who grabbed weapons and got in their truck as he ran though their neighbourhood. The court was told that William « Roddie » Bryan,52, a neighbour, joined in and recorded the video of Travis McMichael shooting Mr Arbery three times. The chase began after another neighbour saw Mr Arbery wandering inside a home under construction, where security cameras had recorded him before, and called a police non-emergency number. Greg McMichael told police that at one point he had shouted at Mr Arbery: « Stop or I’ll blow your f****** head off! », the prosecutor said.
