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ATLANTA: Georgia Attorney General asked federal prosecutors on Sunday (May 11) to investigate local police response to the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man who authorities say was killed by a former white police officer and her son as the victim ran through a small town.
The case, in which the suspects were arrested more than two months after the shooting and days after a video of the murder was released, sparked a scandal in the Brunswick community in southeast Georgia, and among rights activists. civilians across the country.
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Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, were Arrested Thursday by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and charged with assault and aggravated murder in the Feb. 23 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, 25, in Brunswick, about 480 km southeast of Atlanta.
Former police officer Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, pose for a backup photo after they were arrested in Brunswick.
State Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement that he asked the US Department of Justice. USA To open an investigation into how the case was handled by two local prosecutors, district attorneys for the Brunswick and Waycross Judicial Circuits, and the Glynn County Police Department.
According to Carr, both prosecutors ended by recusing themselves from the investigation, one of them, the Waycross district attorney, after providing the police with a written opinion that no arrests should be made.
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That opinion, Carr said, was issued a day after the shooting, but before the Waycross district attorney had been appointed to the case.
Video of the shooting captured by a witness in a vehicle near the scene shows Arbery jogging down a narrow two-lane highway and around the McMichaels van, stopping in the right lane with the driver’s door open.
When Arbery crosses again in front of the truck, a shot is fired. Arbery is then seen fighting with a man holding a rifle while a second man stands in the truck bed brandishing a pistol.
Two more shots are heard before Arbery stumbles and falls facedown on the asphalt. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said it was Travis McMichael who fired the fatal round.
READ: ‘Probable cause more than enough’ in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in the United States
According to a New York Times police report, Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn County police officer and district attorney investigator, told detectives that the incident started when he saw Arbery from his front yard running down the street. .
Elder McMichael told police that because he suspected Arbery in a series of recent robberies in the neighborhood, he and his son chased him in the truck, with Gregory McMichael carrying a .357 Magnum revolver and Travis armed with a shotgun. .
Gregory McMichael said Arbery began attacking his son, fighting for the shotgun, causing the son to open fire.
Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot to death in Brunswick, Georgia, USA. USA On February 23, 2020, he is seen in an undated photo provided by Marcus Arbery. (Photo: Courtesy of Marcus Arbery / Brochure via REUTERS)
According to a letter obtained by the Times, prosecutors argued that there was no probable cause to arrest the McMichaels because they legally carried firearms and had the right to pursue a robbery suspect and use deadly force to protect themselves.
Civil rights advocates pointed to the incident as the latest case of white perpetrators who killed a black man and went unpunished.
In his statement calling for a federal investigation, Carr said that the Brunswick district attorney had disclosed in a challenge application that he had a son employed at the district attorney’s office who had handled Arbery’s previous prosecution, and that Gregory McMichael was an investigator in that regard. case.
The nature of the previous case involving Arbery was not disclosed.
