RUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — More than two months after a black man was fatally shot while running through a Georgia neighborhood, the white father and son arrested in the case were arraigned on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault Friday.
The investigation by local authorities had seemed stalled until this week, when a video of the Feb. 23 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery was shared widely on social media, prompting outrage across the nation.
“All that matters is what the facts tell us,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said Friday, noting that his agency brought charges a day after it was brought into the case. Reynolds said “every stone will be uncovered” in the investigation.
Addressing the question of racial intent, Reynolds noted that Georgia has no hate crime law. That has prompted many civil rights activists to call for a federal investigation.
Arrest warrants for Gregory and Travis McMichael filed in court Friday confirmed, as the initial police report stated, that Travis McMichael “pointed and discharged a shotgun … at Ahmaud Arbery.” But there were no new details.
In a letter to Glynn County police in early April, a prosecutor previously assigned to the case outlined reasons he believed there was “insufficient probable cause to issue arrest warrants” in the case. Waycross D.A. George E. Barnhill argued that the McMichaels’ actions were legal under Georgia laws on citizen’s arrests, the open carry of guns and self-defense.
The McMichaels told police they pursued Arbery, with another person recording them on video, after spotting him running in their neighborhood. The father and son said they thought he matched the appearance of a burglary suspect who they said had been recorded on a surveillance camera some time before.
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, has said she thinks her son, a former high school football player, was just jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood before he was killed.
Arbery would have turned 26 on Friday, and a crowd of several hundred people, most wearing masks, sang “Happy Birthday” in his honor outside the Glynn County Courthouse. Many expressed frustration at the long wait before arrests were made and fears that the justice system will fail them.
“The work is just beginning,” John Perry, president of the Brunswick NAACP chapter, told the crowd. “We can’t stop now. We can’t lose focus and we’ve got to make sure the prosecution gets done.”
Anthony Johnson, 40, said Arbery was his neighbor for about a decade. He said he wants to see the McMichaels get the same treatment in the legal system as black defendants.
“Just arresting them, that ain’t doing nothing,” Johnson said. “We want them convicted. We want them sent to prison for life.”
Gregory and Travis McMichael made their first, brief court appearances Friday afternoon.
The father and son, both wearing orange jumpsuits, appeared individually from jail on a videoconference screen in the courtroom of Magistrate Judge Wallace Harrell. Inmates aren’t appearing in person because of the coronavirus.
The judge spent roughly a minute reading each man his rights and the charges faced. A Superior Court judge will have to decide whether to grant them bond.
