‘Modern-day lynching’ of black jogger heightens US racial tensions
At 1.08pm on Feb 23 a resident standing under a tree in his front garden on Satilla Drive, in a leafy suburb of Brunswick, Georgia, placed a call to a non-emergency police number.
The man spoke in a calm Southern drawl, describing the scene 20ft across the road to a dispatcher. He did not sound overly concerned. “Er, there’s a guy in a house right now, it’s under construction ...” he said. “There he goes right now. He’s running down the street ... black guy, white T-shirt.”
The running man was Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, 25, who was out jogging. Minutes after the call Mr Arbery was dead, shot three times by white armed vigilantes on a suburban street in broad daylight.
Mr Arbery’s death, which his family called a modern-day lynching, comes at a time when racial tensions in America are rising. Barack Obama, the former US president, raised Mr Arbery’s case over the weekend during a commencement speech for college graduates via videolink.
“When a black man goes for a jog ... some folks feel like they can stop and question, and shoot him,” he said, without naming the case.
In the US, a majority – black and white – describe race relations as “bad”. Seventy per cent say things are getting worse, according to Pew Research. The average white family has 10 times as much wealth as the average black family. Nowhere are those racial contrasts starker than in Brunswick, a small coastal city of 16,000, two thirds black, one third white. It is the poorest city in Georgia, with 39 per cent below the poverty line, yet sparkling yachts sit in the marina.
Racial prejudice casts a long shadow over Brunswick. Exactly 129 years before Mr Arbery was shot – on Feb 23, 1891 – two black men were lynched from an oak tree by a mob of 150 white vigilantes.
Following the end of segregation half a century ago, a local official had the public swimming pool filled with mud, rather than allow black residents to share it with whites. Today, the authorities in Brunswick stand accused of turning a blind eye. The white gunmen who shot Mr Arbery were only arrested two and a half months later, when footage of the incident emerged.
Why Mr Arbery had gone inside the partially built structure in a white area remains a mystery. Security video showed him examining the structure. He wanted to be an electrician, and might have been looking at wiring. There was also a tap, and he may simply have stopped to get a drink.
As he left and ran on, he passed a home a few doors down, at 230 Satilla Drive. The owner, Greg Mcmichael, 64, was on his lawn. Mr Mcmichael, who is white, had been a local police officer for seven years, and an investigator for the prosecutor’s office for 30 years.
It was the second time he had seen Mr Arbery in the vicinity of the home that was under construction. Mr Mcmichael grabbed his .357 Magnum. His son, Travis Mcmichael, 34, took a shotgun. They hopped in their pickup truck and followed.
While in the truck, at 1.14pm, Mr Mcmichael called 911. “There’s a black male running down the street,” he told the operator. Then he can be heard shouting: “Drop that. Dammit! Stop. Drop it!” The phone stayed on but there was no sound for three minutes until the sirens of police cars arrived.
Already at the scene were two other men. One was Roddy Bryan, 50, who lives around the corner and knows the Mcmichaels. He filmed the shooting on his mobile phone. The other was Diego Perez, whose house Mr Arbery also ran past. He described arriving and seeing a body lying in the road.
According to a police report, Mr Mcmichael told officers he and his son were attempting to perform a citizens’ arrest of a suspected burglar. The suspect “violently attacked” his son and the gun went off, he said. The Mcmichaels were not arrested.
The local district attorney, Jackie Johnson, recused herself from the case because Mr Mcmichael worked as an investigator in her own office. A second prosecutor concluded the Mcmichaels had “solid cause” to pursue their suspect, were “allowed to use deadly force” to protect themselves, and there were “no grounds for arrest”.
However, he then recused himself when it transpired his son, also a prosecutor, had worked with Greg Mcmichael for years.
The case was then handed to a third prosecutor, and nothing happened.
Eventually, on May 5, the video of the shooting recorded by Mr Bryan – which had been seen by police and prosecutors and not acted upon – was leaked. It was released by Greg Mcmichael himself because he apparently believed it would exonerate him as rumours about what had happened swirled around Brunswick.
It showed the Mcmichaels’ truck blocking Mr Arbery, him running around it, then a scuffle in which he was shot by Travis Mcmichael before collapsing on the road. A national outcry followed and on May 7 the Mcmichaels were finally arrested.
A senior prosecutor was drafted in from Atlanta, Georgia’s biggest city. Joyette Holmes, who is black, said she would pursue murder charges.
“[Without the video] I believe it would have been covered up,” Wanda Cooper-jones, Mr Arbery’s mother, said. She called for the death penalty.
A lawyer for Greg Mcmichael said he and his son were the victims of a “rush to judgment” and “the truth will come out”.
‘When a black man goes for a jog … some folks feel like they can stop and question, and shoot him’