Prosecution rests in US trial over Ahmaud Arbery’s killing

Prosecutor says defendants assumed the worst of Arbery before chasing and fatally shooting him. The prosecution has rested its case against the three men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery after presenting evidence it said shows that the defendants wrongly assumed that Arbery, a Black man, was the suspect of a crime in a mostly white southern Georgia neighbourhood. Several witnesses testified on Tuesday, including Dr Edmund Donoghue, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation medical examiner, who said Arbery was hit by two of the three shotgun rounds fired at him. “Is there anything law enforcement or EMS could have done to save his life at the scene?” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski asked the medical examiner. “I don’t think so. No,” Donoghue replied. Arbery, who was 25, was running through a neighbourhood in Brunswick, a coastal community 480km (300 miles) southeast of Atlanta, on February 23, 2020.

Lawyers for the defendants – Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and neighbour William “Roddie” Bryan, 52 – have argued that their clients were justified in chasing Arbery, who was Black, to enforce a citizens’ arrest. A video showing the killing of Arbery leaked in early May of last year, sparking outrage and calls for justice that led to the arrests of the McMichaels and Bryan, who are white. Arbery’s name was invoked during racial justice protests that rocked the country after the murder of George Floyd in late May of 2020 by a Minnesota police officer, whose killing was also recorded on video.