More than two months after an attempted “citizen’s arrest” in a small Georgia town of Brunswick left a young, Black man dead, Ahmaud Arbery’s mother says that the shooting was an “act of racial violence.”
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Jones told CBS News that “an arrest should have been made already.”
READ MORE: Family wants justice after Ahmaud Arbery, 25, is killed by two white men
On February 23, Arbery was jogging in a Brunswick neighborhood when a white man and his son chased him down. They told police that they thought the 25-year-old man looked a suspect in recent break-ins in the neighborhood.
According to the police report, Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael said that they chased Arbery down, confronting him. The men, who were both armed, engaged in a struggle with Arbery. One of the McMichaels then shot the Arbery twice and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Ahmaud is no longer with us and he’s not with us because two men followed him while he was jogging and killed him,” Jones told CBS. She says that the two men should have waited for the police, “They had already made a call to 911.”
The state of Georgia allows people to make citizen’s arrests. To make a citizen’s arrest, a person must witness a crime being committed and detain the suspect until the police reach the scene. The McMichaels did not witness Arbery committing a crime, stating only that he looked like a potential suspect.
There were 911 calls that came in during Arbery’s jog. One caller claimed that they saw someone who was wearing the same clothing looking inside a house that was under construction. The dispatcher asked if the person was breaking into the home, to which the caller responded, “No, it’s all open, it’s under construction. And he’s running right now. There he goes right now.”
Lee Merritt, an attorney for the family believes that “there’s more than enough evidence for a case for murder.”
George McMichael has ties to the local prosecutors’ office. Two prosecutors have already recused themselves from the case.
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