Agents Search Home Of Men Charged With Ahmaud Arbery Killing

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May 20, 2020

TOPLINE

Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation spent hours Tuesday night going through the home of Gregory and Travis McMichael — the father and son duo who are accused in the killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery that was captured in a viral video.

BRUNSWICK, GA – MAY 08: A young girl looks at a memorial for Ahmaud Arbery near where he was shot … [+] and killed May 8, 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia. Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael were arrested the previous night and charged with murder relating to the February 23 shooting in the Satilla Shores neighborhood. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

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KEY FACTS

GBI agents executed a search warrant shortly after 6:30 p.m. as part of Arbery’s murder investigation, the agency said in a statement.

Agents spent more than two hours searching the Brunswick, Georgia, home, according to a report from WSB-TV, also looking through a truck in the McMichaels’ driveway as well as a boat dock behind the house.

The two are currently in custody on charges of murder and aggravated assault related to Arbery’s Feb. 23 shooting death, though the two weren’t arrested until 74 days after the shooting.

Their arrests only came after a video of the shooting was posted on a local radio station’s website on May 5, sparking national outrage and spurring local authorities to ramp up their investigation.

The video appeared to show the McMichaels — who are white — chasing Arbery, a black man, down a street he was jogging on before fatally shooting him, with the release of the video in part spurring the U.S. Department of Justice to look into bringing federal hate crime charges in the case, following a request from Georgia’s attorney general.

An attorney for the McMichaels has denied that the two are guilty of murder or hate crimes, saying “this is not some sort of hate crime fueled by racism.”

KEY BACKGROUND

The video of Arbery’s killing quickly went viral, sparking outrage and bringing intense media scrutiny to the southeast Georgia community.

Many claim the video shows Arbery was racially profiled, and the handling of the case by local authorities — which on several occasions declined to arrest the McMichaels — has also come under fire.

A police report filed from the incident said that the McMichaels mistook the unarmed Arbery for a suspect in neighborhood break-ins, and attorneys for the two have denied hate crime allegations.

Video has since surfaced of a 2017 confrontation between Arbery and police, with family lawyers saying the video shows Arbery had been “harassed” by police.

The body camera footage, first shared by The Guardian, shows an incident in a park where a police officer attempted to tase an unarmed Arbery, who told the officer “you’re bothering me for nothing.” A police report claimed the officer felt Arbery was threatening him.

CRITICAL QUOTE

“The same reason that Ahmaud Arbery was killed was the same reason he was stopped in that park — it was the criminalization of blackness itself,” S. Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery’s family, said at a news conference.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

It’s unclear what investigators were looking for at the house, and what evidence might have been collected Tuesday.

Agents Search Home Of Men Charged With Ahmaud Arbery Killing

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KEY FACTS

KEY BACKGROUND

CRITICAL QUOTE

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

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