By Rich McKay
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (Reuters) – A Georgia jury is expected to deliberate for a second day Wednesday on murder and other charges against three white men who chased and shot Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who ran through their mostly white neighborhood.
The jury met for more than six hours Tuesday without reaching a verdict as the panel weighed evidence from the more than two dozen witnesses called during a trial of more than two weeks.
Travis McMichael, 35, his father Gregory McMichael, 65, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, have pleaded not guilty to charges including murder, aggravated assault and falseimprisonment for the killing in the Satilla Shores neighborhood just outside Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020.
Travis McMichael, the only defendant to take thewitness stand, said he fired his shotgun at the 25-year-old Arbery in self defense.
The shooting happened after the defendants jumped in their pickup trucks and chased Arbery to detain him, they said, because they believed he might have been responsible for property crimes that had left the neighborhood on edge.
No evidence emerged that Arbery ever stole anything on his frequent runs through Satilla Shores. He was killed with nothing in his pockets, not even a cell phone or wallet.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley instructed the jury of11 white men and women and one Black man in the law governingthe case including now defunct citizen’s arrest law at the heart of the defense.
The law was repealed after Bryan’s cellphone video of theshooting caused outrage.
Walmsley told jurors that someone can make a citizen’sarrest only if a crime has occurred “in his presenceor within his immediate knowledge.”
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Brunswick; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
