Recently released body camera footage of the Ahmaud Arbery case shows the men accused of killing him describing the February incident to police while he was distressed and covered in Arbery’s blood.
“I know, I just want it [a police investigation] to do it right, “Travis McMichael tells a video officer.” It just doesn’t look good. I just shot a man. “
McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael and a third man, neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., have been charged in connection with Arbery’s death earlier this year.
The men said they chased Arbery through his Georgia neighborhood before confronting him, suspecting he was breaking into houses in the area.
“I grab my .357 magnum (issued by Glynn County PD, by the way), so we take off,” Gregory McMichael tells the video agents with the blood still in his hands. “And he pulls over to your side and yells, ‘Hey, stop, stop, stop, we want to talk to you’ and keep running.”
Bryan tells agents in the video that he pulled her out of the driveway to try to stop Arbery from leaving the neighborhood.
“Should we chase him? I don’t know,” Bryan told police.
Travis McMichael ended up shooting Arbery in the chest during the fight and killed him.
Lawyers for the Arbery family have said he was jogging around the neighborhood when the three men attacked him.
For months no arrests were made related to Arbery’s death, until the video of the incident taken by a passerby went viral online.
The McMichaels were arrested on May 7 and Bryan was also arrested two weeks later.
In June, a grand jury in Georgia issued charges against the three men for felony murder, four felony counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempted felony, according to the New York Times.