This archive report was first published on 9 May 2020.
On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two white men, Travis McMichael and his father Gregory McMichael, in a suburban neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia.
According to the authorities, Arbery was jogging near his home when he was pursued by the McMichaels, who had grabbed two guns and followed him in a truck. Gregory McMichael told the police that he thought Arbery looked like a man suspected in several break-ins in the area, but there had been just one burglary in the neighborhood since January: the theft of a handgun from an unlocked truck parked outside Travis McMichael's house.
On February 27, the Brunswick District Attorney's Office and the Glynn County Police Department conducted the initial investigation into the killing, but the district attorney, Jackie L. Johnson, recused herself from the case due to her office's past connection with Gregory McMichael.
After a public records request, The Brunswick News reported details of the Glynn County Police Department's records on the shooting, which claimed that after the McMichaels pursued Arbery, Travis McMichael and Arbery 'started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot.'
On April 1, a local newspaper published details of the police investigation, and on April 13, the case was transferred to a third prosecutor, District Attorney Tom Durden of the Atlantic Judicial Circuit.
For two months, the shooting received little attention outside Brunswick, but on May 5, a graphic video of the fatal encounter began to circulate online, galvanizing an already growing chorus of voices calling for charges to be brought in the case.
On May 7, Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested at home and booked into a jail in Glynn County, charged with murder and aggravated assault.
