Oh man not this again...
In a recording of a 911 call, which appears to have been made moments before the chase began, a neighbor told a dispatcher that a black man was inside a house that was under construction on the McMichaels’ block.
During the chase, the McMichaels yelled, “Stop, stop, we want to talk to you,” according to Gregory McMichael’s account in the police report. They then pulled up to Mr. Arbery, and Travis McMichael got out of the truck with the shotgun.
“[Gregory] McMichael stated the unidentified male began to violently attack Travis and the two men then started fighting over the shotgun at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot,” the report states.
The police report and other documents obtained by The New York Times do not indicate that Mr. Arbery was armed.
Gregory McMichael is a former Glynn County police officer and a former investigator with the local district attorney’s office who retired last May. Neither he nor his son has been arrested or charged.
Why has no one been arrested?
Shortly after the shooting, the prosecutor for the Brunswick judicial district recused herself because Gregory McMichael had worked in her office.
The case was sent to George E. Barnhill, the district attorney in Waycross, Ga., who eventually recused himself from the case after Mr. Arbery’s mother argued that he had a conflict because his son also works for the Brunswick district attorney.
But before he relinquished the case, Mr. Barnhill argued in a letter obtained by The Times that there was not sufficient probable cause to arrest Mr. Arbery’s pursuers. In the letter, Mr. Barnhill noted that the McMichaels were legally carrying their firearms under Georgia’s open carry law. He said the pursuers were within their rights to pursue what he called “a burglary suspect,” and cited a state law that states, “A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge.”
Mr. Barnhill also argued that if Mr. Arbery attacked Travis McMichael, Mr. McMichael was “allowed to use deadly force to protect himself” under Georgia law.
Mr. Barnhill wrote, in his letter, that Mr. Arbery had mental health issues, though he does not elaborate on this point, and that he had prior convictions. Court records show that Mr. Arbery was convicted of shoplifting and of violating probation in 2018. Five years earlier, according to The Brunswick News, he was indicted on charges that he took a handgun to a high school basketball game.
Those details, Mr. Barnhill argued, “help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man.”
