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The Georgia state attorney general petitioned the US Department of Justice. USA Investigate the murder of an unarmed black runner whose death sparked outrage across the country.
Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on February 23 while running on a sunny day in a residential neighborhood in the city of Brunswick. Two white men were arrested and charged for their shooting last week.
“I formally requested the United States Department of Justice (@SDGAnews) to conduct an investigation into the handling of the case,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr tweeted yesterday in an official statement.
Carr said his office is “committed to a complete and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case was handled from the beginning.”
“The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers,” he added.
Arbery’s death gained national notoriety last week with the release of a 28-second cell phone video that captured the shooting.
In the video, Arbery is seen running down a residential street and approaching a stopped white van in the right lane with a man standing in the back.
When Mr. Arbery tries to dodge the vehicle, he faces a second man with a shotgun. There is an altercation between the two and the firing of three shots.
Police identified the two white men as Travis McMichael, 34, and his father Gregory McMichael, 64, who live in Brunswick. They were arrested Thursday and charged with murder and aggravated assault.
According to the February police report, Gregory McMichael told officers that he believed Arbery was a suspect in a series of robberies in the area and that he had seen the young black man “dragging his butt” down the street.
Read:
US Police Arrest Two White Men for Murder of Black Runner
Gregory McMichael said he entered his house and got his .357 Magnum while his son grabbed a shotgun.
When they finally encountered Arbery and Travis McMichael got out of the truck with the shotgun, Arbery began “attacking him violently,” the father said, according to the police report.
The father said he saw his son shoot Mr. Arbery and that the corridor fell to the ground.
The images of the murder sent shock waves across the United States.
Some people drew parallels to the shooting death of another unarmed young black man, Trayvon Martin, by a neighborhood guard in Florida in 2012.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms described the Arbery murder as “lynching.”
“It’s heartbreaking that it’s 2020 and this was a lynching of an African American man,” Bottoms told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday in “State of the Union.”
In an ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper on Sunday, rapper Jay-Z and singer Alicia Keys appealed to the Georgia governor and attorney general to “ensure that a fair trial is held, as that can only lead to the felony convictions for both McMichaels. “
“If you take those necessary steps, you will send a message to people who want to drag Georgia to a time when African Americans were killed simply for voting: hate and fear will lose,” they said.
On Friday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vic Reynolds, said at a press conference that “there is more than likely probable cause” to charge the McMichaels with murder, but did not explain why the suspects took 74 days. in being arrested.
He added that the investigation was ongoing and that there could be more arrests.
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