2nd Video Appears in Jogger's Shooting Death

As outrage grows, Atlanta's mayor calls Ahmaud Arbery's death a 'lynching'
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted May 10, 2020 12:50 PM CDT

Atlanta's mayor has stepped into the debate over Ahmaud Arbery's killing—and she isn't holding back. "The rhetoric that we hear coming out of the White House ... I think many who are prone to being racist are given permission to do it in an overt way in a way we wouldn't [otherwise] see in 2020," Keisha Lance Bottoms said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, the Hill reports. She was talking about two white men accused of killing Arbery, a black man, during an apparent attempt at a citizen's arrest in Georgia. "It's heartbreaking," said Bottoms of the February killing. "It's 2020 and this was a lynching of an African American man." For more, including a key 911 call:

  • A second video: The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is analyzing a second video that looks like a security camera at a home near the shooting, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The video shows a man who resembles Arbery, 25, entering the garage of a house under construction, walking around the back, and leaving a few minutes later. He didn't appear to have taken anything. (An earlier video showed the killing itself.)

  • 911 call: The new video seems to show what a 911 caller was saying at the time, 11 Alive reports. "And you said someone is breaking into it right now?" asks the dispatcher. The caller answers, "No. It's all open, it's under construction. And he's running right now! There he goes right now." (Arbery apparently liked jogging in the area.)
  • The McMichaels: The suspects, Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, told police they armed themselves in pursuit of Arbery because they'd seen him on other surveillance tapes and once saw him stick "his hand down his pants." They believed he had committed other area burglaries, but Glynn County police records show no such reports around that time.
  • Deadly force: Former Fulton prosecutor Manny Arora says the McMichaels may not have the law on their side. He tells the Journal-Constitution that as per Georgia law, deadly force can only be used for self-defense or to stop a forcible felony: "If you initiate an assault you don't get then claim self-defense if the other person reacts to them being assaulted," he explains.
  • Getting 'the truth' out: That initial video of Arbery's death was leaked by Alan Tucker, a local lawyer who had consulted with the suspects informally. "It got the truth out there as to what you could see," he tells the New York Times. "My purpose was not to exonerate them or convict them."

  • 'Justifiable homicide': Glynn County officials released an outline Sunday of their probe of the killing, WTGS reports. In it, District Attorney George Barnhill, Sr. of the Waycross Judicial Circuit "advised detectives before noon on February 24th that the act was justifiable homicide."
  • 'Hunting an animal': Arbery's family members are also speaking up. "Whatever they are trying to do to justify what they did, they can't do it," the victim's uncle, Gary Arbery, tells WSB-TV. Arbery's father, Marcus, asks: "If he committed a crime, why don’t you call the authorities? But you came at him like you were hunting an animal."
  • More arrests: Georgia authorities say more arrests are possible in the case. "Don't know yet," GBI Director Vic Reynolds tells NPR when asked for details. "We're going to go wherever the evidence takes us."
  • Online threat: The GBI says it's "actively investigating" a Facebook post that includes a threat to people protesting Arbery's death, WFMJ reports. Hundreds of protesters gathered Friday near the site of Arbery's shooting as national outrage grew over the first video.

(One suspect in the case knew Arbery from "an earlier prosecution.")

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