*A Georgia family is demanding justice after two suspected white supremacists targeted and shot dead a 25-year-old Black man who was out jogging earlier this year after assuming her was a criminal.
Ahmaud Arbery was unarmed when he was fatally shot in the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia, on February 23.
According to Glynn County Police, Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory, 64, a retired district attorney investigator, had seen Arbery running in the area and decided to arm themselves, chase him down in a pickup truck and kill him.
Now, Ahmaud’s family is worried the case won’t get the mainstream media attention it deserves due to the ongoing COVID-19 hype.
According to The Brunswick News, Travis and Gregory followed Ahmaud in their truck and demanded that he stop and talk to them.
At some point, they got out of their truck, confronted the man and after a struggle over the shotgun with Travis, Arbery was shot at least twice and killed.
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Brunswick, GA , On Feb 23, 2020,
Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was out on a workout run. He was murdered after being racially profiled by a retired district attorney investigator Greg McMichael and his adult son. They HUNTED him down. Shot him twice. He bled out and died. ?#IRunWithMaud pic.twitter.com/yId2EcE7qH
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) April 25, 2020
Gregory told the police that Arbery looked like a burglary suspect, while the victim’s mother believes her son was targeted because of his race, reports The New York Times.
No one has been charged or arrested in connection with the killing because prosecutor George E. Barnhill said Gregory and Travis acted within the state’s citizen’s arrest law and Travis acted out of self-defense.
Barnhill also claims there is video of Arbery “burglarizing a home immediately preceding the chase and confrontation,” according to The Times.
Activists say even if Arbery was up to no good, that did not give the father and son the right to hunt him down and kill him.
“This incident was at the least a case of overly zealous citizens that wrongfully profiled the victim without cause,” said Reverend John Davis Perry II, president of the Brunswick chapter of the NAACP. “These men felt justified in taking the law in their own hands.”
Friends and family are speaking out so the case can get attention beyond their Georgia city.
“We can’t do anything because of this corona stuff,” said Cooper. “We thought about walking out where the shooting occurred, just doing a little march but we can’t be out right now.”
“There are a lot of people absolutely ready to protest,” said Jason Vaughn, Arbery’s former football coach. “But because of social distancing and being safe, we have to watch what’s going on with the coronavirus.”
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