Suspect made 911 calls days before Arbery death
In the months before the Feb. 23 shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, residents in the Satilla Shores neighborhood outside Brunswick, Ga., reported thefts, trespassing and activity they deemed suspicious to police and posted to the neighborhood’s Facebook page and Nextdoor App a description of a man who had been entering a home under construction, according to police records.
On the night of Feb. 11, Travis McMichael was driving past the construction site when he spotted someone he deemed suspicious, according to a 911 call of the incident obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Mr. McMichael, 34, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 64, are charged with felony murder and aggravated assault for the shooting death of Mr. Arbery that occurred 12 days later.
Mr. Arbery, who was 25, liked to jog in the area, his family has said. Security camera footage recorded the day of the shooting shows a person believed to be Mr. Arbery entering the construction site and leaving, minutes before the encounter with Travis and Gregory McMichaels that left Mr. Arbery dead.
Republican wins Calif. House seat
Former Navy fighter pilot Mike Garcia captured an open U.S. House seat north of Los Angeles on Wednesday, giving Republicans a rare victory in one of the nation’s most Democratic states.
Mr. Garcia defeated Democrat Christy Smith in a special election to complete the remainder of the term of former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned last year. Mr. Garcia’s win marks the first time in over two decades a Republican captured a Democratic-held congressional district in California.
“I’m ready to go to work,” Mr. Garcia said.
Coupled with another GOP special election victory Tuesday in a heavily Republican Wisconsin district, Mr. Garcia’s win would leave Democrats with a 233-198 House majority, plus an independent and three vacancies.
Manafort released from prison over virus
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s onetime presidential campaign chairman who was convicted as part of the special counsel’s Russia investigation, has been released from federal prison to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement due to concerns about the coronavirus, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Manafort, 71, was let out Wednesday morning from FCI Loretto, a low-security prison in Pennsylvania, according to his attorney, Todd Blanche. Manafort, jailed since June 2018, had been serving more than seven years in prison following his conviction.
But Manafort did not meet qualifications set by the Bureau of Prisons for potential release in the pandemic. Under the bureau’s guidelines, priority is supposed to be given to those inmates who have served half of their sentence or inmates with 18 months or less left and who served at least 25% of their time. The bureau has discretion about who can be released.