Ahmaud Arbery’s murder was caught on video! It’s graphic but must be shared. @BenCrumpLaw will be representing Ahmaud’s father Marcus Arbery as we seek justice in this modern-day lynching. Everyone must know the truth! #JusticeforAhmaudArbery pic.twitter.com/y4kBgRJ8X6
— Benjamin Crump, Esq. (@AttorneyCrump) May 5, 2020
The lawyer who leaked video of the Ahmaud Arbery shooting now says that the older defendant in the case, Gregory McMichael, participated in the release.
The outlet WSB-TV reported Friday evening that they’d confirmed it. Alan Tucker, the attorney, told NBC News that McMichael wanted to get “the truth” out to the public.
“That he and his son were not white supremacists driving in a pick-up truck with a confederate flag in the back who shot a black man in the back because he was jogging in a white neighborhood,” he said. “He hoped the public would see them trying to make a citizen’s arrest on a young man that was running from a home under construction – that he had been seen in at night on several occasions while he plundered around on the owner’s security camera.”
Tucker said that McMichael took a thumb drive carrying video to the radio station that first published the footage.
Well, at best, there’s hardly a consensus on the truth of the matter, and footage only fueled outcry over Arbery’s death. Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the alleged victim’s father, called the incident a “modern-day lynching.”
McMichael and his son, the alleged shooter Travis McMichael, were arrested for murder and aggravated assault.
Both defendants are in jail, and being represented by different legal teams.
“Given the daily onslaught over the last several weeks of new information — some credible, some not so credible — you must also know how much work there still is to be done,” attorney Laura Hogue, one of the lawyers who represents Gregory McMichael, said in a press conference Friday, according to CBS News. “But significantly, we know several other critically important facts. Those facts point to a very different narrative than the one that brings you all here today. Those facts will be revealed where all facts that matter are revealed: in a courtroom.”
Tucker is not representing the defendants in the criminal case.
The Arbery case lands on a cultural fissure. He was black, and the defendants are white. Georgia is one of four states without a hate crime statute. The elder McMichael allegedly told cops that they confronted him on February 23 in Brunswick, Georgia because they believed he might have been the suspect in a series of break-ins. Footage at a nearby home under construction showed a man–identified as Arbery by his family’s attorneys–on the property shortly before the shooting. Relatives said that the alleged victim was jogging. The homeowner, who lives about 90 miles away, said that nothing had ever been stolen on the property.
Footage from the months leading up to the shooting periodically showed a “young man” at the property, who tripped the motion sensor cameras. An attorney for the homeowner has suggested that perhaps he was there to get water from two faucets that weren’t on camera. Attorneys for Arbery’s parents said they were unable to confirm if it was the alleged victim in the surveillance footage released by the homeowner’s lawyer, except for in one video, according to CNN.
NEW VIDEO shows there were frequent visitors on the construction site where Ahmaud was seen leaving on the day he was killed both day & night. Ahmaud Arbery seems to be the only one who was presumed to be a criminal and ultimately the only one murdered based on that presumption. pic.twitter.com/8tTwKPsck0
— S. Lee Merritt, Esq. (@MeritLaw) May 15, 2020
[Screengrab via Benajmin Crump]
