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Racial slur at centre in case of Ahmaud Arbery who was killed while jogging
Arbery was killed February 23 after Travis McMichael and his father, Greg McMichael, gave chase when they spotted the 25-year-old black man running in their neighbourhood.
The white man who killed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in the United States’ Georgia stood over his body after shooting him and used a racial slur, according to testimony in a court hearing on Thursday.
The inflammatory revelation came amid a week of angry nationwide protests over law enforcement biases against black victims that erupted after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The hearing in the Arbery cases lasted for seven hours. It was held to determine whether there was enough evidence to proceed with a murder trial.
Arbery was killed February 23 after Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, Greg McMichael, 64, gave chase when they spotted the 25-year-old black man running in their neighbourhood. McMichaels chased him down in pickup truck.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Richard Dial told a preliminary hearing that the third accused in the cases, William Bryan, saw McMichaels driving by and joined the chase in his own truck.
Arbery repeatedly reversed directions and ran into a ditch while trying to escape, the prosecution said.
Travis McMichael then got out of his truck and confronted Arbery, fatally shooting the black man with a pump-action shotgun. McMichael later told the police that he shot him in self-defence after Arbery refused his order to get on the ground, Dial said.
“Mr Bryan said that after the shooting took place before police arrival, while Mr Arbery was on the ground, that he heard Travis McMichael make the statement, ‘f - - - ing n - - - er’,” he added.
“Ahmaud Arbery was chased, hunted down and ultimately executed at the hands of these men,” prosecutor Jesse Evans told the judge. “He was on a run on a public road in a public subdivision. He was defenceless and unarmed.”
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones called the release of new details in court “very, very heartbreaking.”
At the conclusion of the hearing, Magistrate Court Judge Wallace Harrell found that there was enough evidence for the cases against all three defendants to proceed.
The McMichaels both wore masks as they sat side-by-side watching the hearing onscreen at the Glynn County jail. The judge rejected defence motions to have them brought to the courtroom, citing emergency precautions because of the coronavirus pandemic. Bryan waived his presence at the hearing.
It wasn’t until May 7 - two days after Bryan’s cellphone video leaked online and stirred a national outcry - that the defendants were charged.
