GA - Ahmaud Arbery, 25, jogger, fatally shot by former PD and son, Brunswick, Feb 2020

[Sillybilly]

This post lands at random.

Please leave the black/white racial descriptors out of this discussion. Just use their names.

Thank you.

 

[JaxFlaGal]

As a woman, if I was jogging and three men with guns, in two different trucks attempted to block me, follow me, order me to stop and answer their questions multiple times, I would be scared out of my mind thinking I was about to be kidnapped and abducted. If these men blocked my path, while a third is pulling up on me from behind and then lunged at me with a gun, of course I would fight back. I can't imagine the terror a black man in the deep South is feeling in that same scenario? Watching that video brings flashbacks of movie scenes with lynchings.

I agree with you, Lark. As a woman, I was once stalked, then clearly pursued by one man in a car while I was out for an afternoon walk. He used his vehicle to try and block me into an area where I was alone, then tried to close in. I was able to evade the pursuit but I still can vividly recall his expression turning from frustration to rage as I evaded him. Being intentionally chased down by someone in a vehicle is a shockingly dehumanizing feeling which returns to me when I watch the video from this case.

 

[firebird]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me half a dozen times or more and shame on me. I'll wait to see how this shakes out. jmo

 

[kaen]

I agree with you, Lark. As a woman, I was once stalked, then clearly pursued by one man in a car while I was out for an afternoon walk. He used his vehicle to try and block me into an area where I was alone, then tried to close in. I was able to evade the pursuit but I still can vividly recall his expression turning from frustration to rage as I evaded him. Being intentionally chased down by someone in a vehicle is a shockingly dehumanizing feeling which returns to me when I watch the video from this case.

I am sorry this happened to you. I am glad that you escaped.

One of the keys to staving off a violent crime is being present and using the resources that you have and ones that are around you. Mr. Arbery tried to dodge these men by running in the opposite direction. The men with the neighbor behind them surrounded him. Monday morning quarterbacking about the actions he should have taken run counter to what happens in the spur of the moment in a violent crime. Historically in sexual assault cases, people demeaned women/men who didn't fight back enough or do enough to avoid the assault by stating the woman/man was "wanting it" or "making poor choices and deserving it" which should not be held against the perpetrator. In this case it seems like some are talking about all of the things that Mr. Arbery should have or could have done. In reality, Mr. Arbery had no clue that two men with guns and a third man in another vehicle would attempt to stop him that day, he could not prepare for it. He had to think and act on the spot--using his resources and the resources around him to escape. He tried to run in another direction before they moved on him again. This encounter started when he tried to run away from them, not when he turned in front of the pick-up truck. Mr. Arbery was acting to survive a volatile, threatening, and escalating situation. He was confronted by a man with a gun and others who may have had guns. It was a fight of up to three on one. He had no cover, no way to escape. He did what he could to survive. These men had the cover of vehicle, the advantage of numbers, the advantage of differing positioning, and the communication ability. All of this is, of course, IMO.

 

[Boxer]

Dbm

Here it's mentioned on CNN, there was some $2,500 in fishing equipment stolen out of a boat in the garage. Evidently, they caught the guy on camera several times but a police report wasn't filed. Perhaps they will play the vids in court.
South Georgia community demands justice for Ahmaud Arbery's death - CNN

Also, his friends and family say, if it ain't rainin', he's jogging. (Dad: He lives the next street over) ... Though we have also heard, he lived 4 miles away and 12 miles away. I'm not believing he was such a fanatic jogger, why would everyone just buy that story off hand? And not wait for more details, like where he actually lived? People are saying all kinds of things like they were a fact. Racist supremacists, hunted him down, murdered in cold blood, what a flood of fake news!

Also, walking through a burgled home, under construction, casing it out for a night time raid? Just trespassing? Well, if it was me, I would want the police checking him out, wouldn't you? The citizen's arrest on that one is perhaps a liner. It certainly won't cause a murder 1 conviction, saying all he did was trespass, should just ignore him.

In the meantime, the GBI heard the mob and arrested them right away, no questions asked. Let the true facts flow!

Was McMicheals truck unlocked when the handgun stolen? Not worried about neighborhood kids getting a hold of it?

Maybe they will find that Arbery is in fact the neighborhood thief.
Doesn't make a difference to the crimes committed by McMichael of detaining him, brandishing a weapon.

 

[MsBetsy]

Watching this, I see Arbery lunge hard to the left after passing the Truck, to engage physically. The fact that he is the aggressor is pointed by the fact his charge took them all the way across the road to the left. He went more than 1 foot. <modsnip: Removed sarcastic comment>

Arbery was not the aggressor in this situation, the men chasing him were.

You can't provoke someone to attack you with the intent to use deadly force in response.

Travis cannot claim self defense when he himself was the instigator. He had no proof that he had committed a crime, or was in the act of committing a crime. There was nothing that would cause him to believe he needed to chase him down with a weapon to stop him in the first place.

Imo

 

[fr brown]

I think they were certain he would stop and wait. When he didn't, they obviously had no Plan B. The son was too close. And what was dad doing in the bed of the pickup truck? He's going to be useless when the thing goes pear-shaped.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about being too close to a developing situation and how it reduces options and the time to assess.

<modsnip: removed blatant generalization>

 

[Cryptic]

Citizen's arrest??
allowing such a thing is a recipe for
disaster- and this case represents exactly
what can go wrong in that situation

My friend told me that a fire arms instructor he took class from categorically refused to discuss citizens arrests or Stand Your Ground concepts in his class for fear of things getting misinterpreted and misapplied.

I also think it is important for me to realize how quickly impulsive actions with weapons deteriorate. I remember a minor incident from my former neighborhood:

- There had been a rash of "porch pirating" incidents of petty theft.
- One of a resident's young sons reported that a shirtless individual had knocked on their door, then quickly walked down a side street (strange, but clearly not illegal)
- The resident arms himself, then goes down the alley looking for the individual.

The resident was middle class and held a responsible job. Yet, he armed himself and impulsively followed an individual for vague reasons who had done nothing illegal and was on public property.

There was no confrontation as the individual could not be found. Yet, what happened in Brunswick clearly shows how impulsive decisions with weapons snowball- fast.

 

[tlcya]

Glynn County commissioner Peter Murphy said he also plans to call for an investigation into the prosecutors and police agencies that investigated Arbery’s shooting over the past two months.

Murphy echoed widely held concerns that three separate district attorneys had reviewed the video, but that the McMichaels were only arrested after the footage was publicly released and pressure intensified.

[SNIP]

But on his way out, Barnhill took the unusual step of telling law enforcement he did not see grounds for the arrests of the McMichaels, arguing their actions were lawful because they were making a citizen’s arrest of a person they believed to be involved in a burglary.

“It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived,” Barnhill wrote. “Under Georgia Law this is perfectly legal.”

But several legal experts told The Washington Post that Barnhill’s application of the state’s citizen’s arrest law is flawed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...cal-officials-handling-ahmaud-arberys-murder/

 

[tlcya]

The police department was put in touch with one of Johnson’s assistant district attorneys after the shooting, but Johnson made the decision not to charge the father and son, the former having worked in her office for more than 20 years, Murphy said.

“The police at the scene went to her, saying they were ready to arrest both of them,” Allen Booker, the Glynn county district 5 commissioner, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “These were the police at the scene who had done the investigation. She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael.”

Days later, Johnson recused herself. Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[SNIP]

On 2 April, Barnhill sent an email to law enforcement authorities saying the 25-year-old Arbery had an “apparent aggressive nature” and that his family were “not strangers to the local criminal justice system”.

‘Every stone will be uncovered’: how Georgia officials failed the Ahmaud Arbery case

 

[tlcya]

DA Barnhill's memo to Glynn County PD

 

[kaen]

I think they were certain he would stop and wait. When he didn't, they obviously had no Plan B. The son was too close. And what was dad doing in the bed of the pickup truck? He's going to be useless when the thing goes pear-shaped.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about being too close to a developing situation and how it reduces options and the time to assess.

<modsnip: removed blatant generalization>

I agree with your mention of Malcom Gladwell and think it is apt in terms of Mr. Arbery's actions-- he had no time to assess, step back or get away so he saw his options foreclosed. I think these killers and the third man were not just doing this spur of the moment.

I don't think they really thought he would willingly stop and wait or there would be no need for the guns or guns to be drawn.

With him running through the neighborhood, it is so clear that he didn't have stolen items on him unless the items were small enough to fit in his pockets. Their call to 911 went nowhere and would not be escalated to having a squad car come immediately. They knew the police would not be investigating unreported thefts from weeks before or, even have enough information based on Mr. Arbery's jog through the area to investigate him as the gun thief. So, they were going to scare the out of him with their fire arms and video tape him in the bright light of day so there would be no mistaking him on a dimly lit surveillance camera. If the police showed up and did nothing, at least, they would make sure he knew they meant business about protecting their neighborhood if Mr. Arbery was the thief.

I think these men have been peeved about thefts in the neighborhood and had little faith that thief would get caught. And, this was their hyper-vigilant neighborhood watch attempt. I think they knew he would run as that is why you had three men (one on the ground out of the truck, one with a higher vantage point in the bed of the truck and one, who has said he wasn't armed, coming from behind), guns drawn, and a camera filming it all.

I come back to questions I had early on:

Were these men breathalyzed or drug tested after this shooting?
Had the three talked about the thefts prior to chasing Mr. Arbery? Was there an agreement to have each other's backs?
Did the third man get a call from the first two? Or, did he hear them starting pursuit and jump in?

 

[sds71]

• William 'Roddie' Bryan was seen for the first time since his cellphone footage exposing the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was leaked this week
• Bryan broke his silence as his lawyer claimed he was 'unarmed' and only a 'witness', not an accomplice, to the shocking attack
• 'He was in his yard and this just starts happening in front of him' so he got in his car and went to the scene, his attorney Kevin Gough said
• Gough said Bryan filmed the scene because there 'had been a number of crimes in this neighborhood and he didn't recognize' Arbery
• Police said Friday that no burglaries had been reported in the neighborhood in the seven weeks leading up to Arbery's death

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8303297/Man-filmed-Ahmaud-Arbery-slaying-claims-witness-says-getting-threats.html

 

[Warwick1991]

As a long time recreational shooter and concealed carry permit holder, my analysis of this situation is that there are likely no grounds for shooting Arbery. In just about every jurisdiction in the US, a civilian may only use deadly force if there is an impending threat to one’s life or threat of grave bodily injury. Some states allow armed defense of one’s property, but that is the exception, with threat to life or bodily injury being the only reason for a civilian to use deadly force. Furthermore, even in states with “Stand Your Ground” laws, deadly force can never be used if an assailant stops the assault and runs away. Once an assailant stops their assault and runs away from the victim, they are no longer considered a threat. Shooting in that situation would be retaliation instead of self defense. Contrary to popular belief and MSM accounts, “Stand Your Ground” legislation would not be a defense for someone shooting a person who is not a threat to life or limb, especially for someone who instigated the encounter.

This situation appears to be an ambush, with a level of force pre-planned by the McMichaels. A careful investigation is needed, especially of the video, but to all appearances there is no justification for shooting Arbery. Even if Arbery had a criminal history and was planning a crime, there is no right to shoot him.

 

[fr brown]

I agree with your mention of Malcom Gladwell and think it is apt in terms of Mr. Arbery's actions-- he had no time to assess, step back or get away so he saw his options foreclosed. I think these killers and the third man were not just doing this spur of the moment.

I don't think they really thought he would willingly stop and wait or there would be no need for the guns or guns to be drawn.

With him running through the neighborhood, it is so clear that he didn't have stolen items on him unless the items were small enough to fit in his pockets. Their call to 911 went nowhere and would not be escalated to having a squad car come immediately. They knew the police would not be investigating unreported thefts from weeks before or, even have enough information based on Mr. Arbery's jog through the area to investigate him as the gun thief. So, they were going to scare the **** out of him with their fire arms and video tape him in the bright light of day so there would be no mistaking him on a dimly lit surveillance camera. If the police showed up and did nothing, at least, they would make sure he knew they meant business about protecting their neighborhood if Mr. Arbery was the thief.

I think these men have been peeved about thefts in the neighborhood and had little faith that thief would get caught. And, this was their hyper-vigilant neighborhood watch attempt. I think they knew he would run as that is why you had three men (one on the ground out of the truck, one with a higher vantage point in the bed of the truck and one, who has said he wasn't armed, coming from behind), guns drawn, and a camera filming it all.

I come back to questions I had early on:

Were these men breathalyzed or drug tested after this shooting?
Had the three talked about the thefts prior to chasing Mr. Arbery? Was there an agreement to have each other's backs?
Did the third man get a call from the first two? Or, did he hear them starting pursuit and jump in?

I do, of course, think Arbery was in an impossible situation (but not of his own choosing). It just wasn't the subject of my post.

But I don't see that you allow that the McMichaels might not have foreseen that what did happen was one of the possible outcomes. (They were armed, according to them, because Arbery had stuck his hands in his pants on a previous occasion as if he had a gun. I'm making no judgment about the truth of that.)

The comment of mine the moderator snipped was intended as a warning to not let preconceived notions about people cloud our thinking. Personally, I can kind of identify with all three parties here.

I think it's unlikely that the McMichaels went out to kill Arbery that day. Your post suggests they'd have to be drunk to do something that daft. So maybe they were setting out to do something less daft.

 

[tlcya]

Bashlor told CNN there had only been one incident reported back on January 1, when someone had stolen a firearm from an unlocked truck outside the McMichaels’ home. Man who filmed Ahmaud Arbery slaying claims he was only a 'witness' as he says he is getting threats | Daily Mail Online

I am curious whose vehicle it was. If it was GM's I am rather shocked that a seasoned former LEO would leave a weapon unsecured to be stolen. Does TM live at the same residence? Perhaps it was his vehicle and his gun. I guess eventually that report from January 1 will be out there in the MSM if it isn't already

 

[tlcya]

Gough said Bryan handed the cellphone footage to police as soon as officers arrived on the scene.

When the police arrived after the shooting, Gregory McMichael said that Mr. Arbery had looked like the suspect in a string of break-ins in the area.

Since last August, there had been at least three calls to police about a man trespassing on a property in the neighborhood, according to documents released by the Glynn County Police Department in response to a public records request. In the weeks before the shooting, Travis McMichael had also called to report that a firearm had been stolen from his truck.

On Feb. 11, another call was made to 911 by someone who said he had caught a man trespassing in a house. The caller, who said he had not seen the man before, had “just chased him” and was sitting outside the house, waiting for police to respond, in a red Ford 150 pickup, the same kind of truck that Travis McMichael reported a weapon stolen from weeks earlier.

“The police at the scene went to her, saying they were ready to arrest both of them,” Allen Booker, the Glynn county district 5 commissioner, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “These were the police at the scene who had done the investigation. She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael.”
-------

Don't mind me, just answering some of my own questions.

ETA: so responding officers were immediately shown the video, they were prepared to charge the men based on their investigation at the scene on the day of the shooting and were allegedly told to back off and not charge by DA Johnson

 

[kaen]

I think it's unlikely that the McMichaels went out to kill Arbery that day. Your post suggests they'd have to be drunk to do something that daft. So maybe they were setting out to do something less daft.

RSBM.

I don't think they would have to be drunk but if they had been drinking it would be good to have had them tested as it might explain some actions they took. Drunk or enraged could get people to do things that are stupid and illegal.

I think they were enraged at their neighborhood having had burglaries. It was stated that a man of color was seen on surveillance at some point. I think they weren't used to a black male running through their area and they got territorial. I think they were going to teach him a lesson. I am not sure they planned on killing him. I do think they were looking to intimidate and make a stand. I think the dad knew that the law felony citizen's arrest wouldn't fly and that is why he did not approach Mr. Arbery and his son did.

 

[tlcya]

SO from what I am putting together, someone or someones had been trespassing on the under construction property since August 2019 and some of those trespasses were reported to police but the individual seen in surveillance video or witnessed was not identifiable.

Travis had his gun stolen from his unlocked vehicle in January 2020 which was reported at the time of theft.

a stolen gun with no suspect witnessed at the time of theft and some trespassing incidents were reported.

Makes it all the more odd to me that the $2500 worth of fishing equipment allegedly stole was not reported until AFTER Arbery lay dead in the street and LEOs were onscene for that.

Things that make one go hmmmm.

ETA this is interesting to me:

If the theft offense involves property valued at more than $500, the crime is punishable as a felony, or as a misdemeanor, at the judge’s discretion. ( § 17-10-5.) If charged as a felony, theft carries a sentence of imprisonment of not less than one year and not more than ten years. ( § 16-8-12.) The other circumstances under which a theft is punishable as a felony in Georgia include:

 

[Cryptic]

Had the three talked about the thefts prior to chasing Mr. Arbery? Was there an agreement to have each other's backs?
Did the third man get a call from the first two? Or, did he hear them starting pursuit and jump in?

I think these are very valid questions and instrumental to determining whether Williams was 'party' to the crime.

If there was a prior agreement for a joint action, the ability to place criminal charges may well depend on whether it was discussed over text / social media or verbally.

Any prior coordination agreements would, of course, have to be proved. In addition, I think that it must also be demonstrated that the third individual had reasonable knowledge that there would be a confrontation with weapons.

Any possible verbal agreement can just be denied. Even electronic agreement to coordinated action might not suffice for 'party to' charges unless weapons were mentioned.

Makes it all the more odd to me that the $2500 worth of fishing equipment allegedly stole was not reported until AFTER Arbery lay dead in the street and LEOs were onscene for that.

Things that make one go hmmmm. ETA this is interesting to me:

If the theft offense involves property valued at more than $500, the crime is punishable as a felony,

Wow, the possible implications of your "connect the dots" are chilling.

The third "dot" is that in Georgia, citizens arrests are permissible if a person either witnesses a felony, or had direct knowledge of one.

Of course, none of the individuals say Arbery take the gear, or had direct knowledge that he did. But, the DA was already pre-disposed not to press charges.

Your "connect the dots" approach raises the vary valid question of whether an attempt was made to excuse or legally justify the attack on Arbery after it occurred:

Arbery was strongly suspected of a felony, and citizens arrests for felonies are permitted, so, the confrontation was "justified".... .