Black jogger shot dead in 2020 | The story of Ahmaud Arbery’s death hunt presented to jurors

(Washington) The three white men on trial for the murder of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in the southern United States in 2020 “cornered him like a rat” on the basis of “mere suspicion”, before killing him, asserted Friday the prosecution at the opening of a long-awaited trial.

After two and a half weeks of jury selection, the parties began to present their arguments to the 12 jurors, including a single black man, in court in Brunswick, a city in Georgia.

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging in an affluent neighborhood of this coastal town, when he was chased by two vans: a father and his son, armed, Gregory and Travis McMichael were in the first, one of their neighbor, William Bryan in the other.

The three defendants, aged 65, 35 and 52 respectively, made impulsive decisions “on the basis of mere presumptions” and ended up “taking the life of this young man,” said prosecutor Linda Dunikoski in her introduction. , by slipping several allusions to the racial dimension of the file.

“Greg McMichael sees him running really fast down the street and what does he do? He decides to go get a weapon “, she noted in particular:” He imagines the worst, he thinks that this stranger, this black man who runs in the street, has a weapon “.

According to her, her son could have dissuaded him, but on the contrary, he grabbed a gun and left with him. “This is the second thoughtless decision,” she said.

As for their neighbor, he tinkers on his porch, when he sees the father and the son chasing Ahmaud Arbery. “He has absolutely no idea what’s going on, but he joins the McMichaels in their hunt. ”

“Skip the caisson”

Together, “they chase him, cut off his route”, William Bryan “rushes at him, pushes him into the ditch”. Father McMichael shouts at him, “Stop where I’m blowing the caisson!” “. “He was stuck like a rat,” added the prosecutor, using the words of an accused.

“Mr. Arbery was attacked for five minutes and all he did was flee. ”

But in the end, Travis McMichael opened fire, she added: the young jogger “didn’t fall right away, he tried to grab the rifle and a second shot was fired”.

In his presentation, M^me Dunikoski also tried to get ahead of the defense arguments.

The three men plead not guilty. They claim to have taken Ahmaud Arbery for a burglar and invoke a law in Georgia which, at the time, authorized ordinary citizens to make arrests.

The young jogger had entered a house under construction several times before the tragedy, but the defendants “knew that they had not stolen anything, that he had not committed any crime”, retorted the prosecutor.

Confederate flag

For nearly three months after Ahmaud Arbery’s death, the services of the local prosecutor, for whom Gregory McMichael, a retired police officer, had worked for a long time, had not made any arrests.

It took the broadcast of the video of the drama, relayed massively on social networks in early May 2020, for the investigation to be entrusted to the state police. Shortly after, the three men were arrested and charged with “murder” and “arbitrary arrest”.

The death of George Floyd a few days later, under the knee of a white police officer, had revived the debate on violence against African-Americans and the name of Ahmaud Arbery had resounded in the processions which multiplied throughout the United States until the end of summer.

Frescoes, slogans, portraits: the young jogger has become an emblematic figure of the Black Lives Matter movement (black lives matter). “A black man should be able to jog without fearing for his life,” Democratic President Joe Biden even tweeted on the first anniversary of his death.

The issue of racism could be addressed more head-on later, with the judge allowing the prosecution to present a photo of Travis McMichael’s van. The license plate features a large Confederate flag, a symbol of the southern slave states during the Civil War.