Arbery’s shooter admits he was not under threat

BRUNSWICK, GA. — The man who killed Ahmaud Arbery testified Thursday that Arbery did not speak, show a weapon or threaten him in any way before he raised his shotgun and pointed it at him.

Under cross-examination by the prosecution on his second day of testimony, Travis McMichael said he was “under the impression” that Arbery could be a threat because he was running straight at him and he had seen the 25-year-old Black man trying to get into the truck of a neighbor who had joined in a pursuit of Arbery.

“All he’s done is run away from you,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said. “And you pulled out a shotgun and pointed it at him.”

McMichael testified several times Wednesday that Arbery had scared him in their first encounter, on Feb. 11, 2020, outside a home under construction, saying he feared Arbery was armed when he reached toward his waistband that day. Arbery did reach for his waistband but never showed a gun.

A cellphone video taken the day of the shooting, Feb. 23, 2020, replayed in court Thursday, shows Arbery running around the back of McMichael’s pickup truck to the passenger side as McMichael, wielding a shotgun, moves to the front and the two come face to face. McMichael said Arbery then attacked him and tried to grab his weapon, and he shot him.

“He was on me,” McMichael said.

McMichael said he had approached Arbery because neighbors indicated something had happened down the road in his coastal Georgia neighborhood of Brunswick and he wanted to ask Arbery about it. Arbery was running in the neighborhood at the time. He said Arbery stopped, but then took off running when McMichael told him police were on the way.

Asked how many times he had previously pulled up behind strangers in the neighborhood to ask them what they were doing there, McMichael said never.

“You know that no one has to talk to anyone they don’t want to talk to, right?” Dunikoski said.

The prosecutor also pressed McMichael on why he didn’t include some details of his testimony Wednesday in his written statement to police, namely the part about his telling Arbery police were on the way.

McMichael said he was “under stress, nervous, scared” at the time of his police interview and “probably being choppy.”

“What were you nervous about?” Dunikoski asked.

“I just killed a man,” McMichael responded. “I had blood on myself. It was the most traumatic event of my life.”

STEPHEN B. MORTON / ASSOCIATED PRESS Travis McMichael speaks from the witness stand during his trial in Brunswick, Georgia. McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, are charged with the February 2020 death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.