Citizen’s Arrest Law Used To Defend White Man Accused Of Killing A Blackman.

                                                                                                                                              Ahmaud Arbery

According to The New York Times, Arbery was running through a suburban neighborhood of ranch houses in a small coastal Georgia city when he passed a man standing in his front yard, who would eventually tell the cops thatMrArbery resembled a suspect in a string of break-ins.

According to a police report, the 64-year-old man, Gregory McMichael, retrieved his son, Travis McMichael, 34, and they grabbed their weapons — a .357 magnum revolver and a shotgun. The two white men hopped into a truck and started following Arbery, who is Black.

“Stop, stop,” they shouted at Arbery, “we want to talk to you.”

Not too long after they began chasing Arbery, there was a struggle over the shotgun and Arbery was shot at least twice and killed. Nobody has yet to be charged or arrested in association with the February 23 killing.

The president of the Brunswick chapter of the NAACP, Rev. John Davis Perry II, called the shooting “troubling.” Meanwhile, Arbery’s family and friends are concerned that the case, similar to the other senseless killings of Black people that have sparked protest around the country. 

“We can’t do anything because of this corona stuff,” explained Wanda Cooper, Arbery’s mother. “We thought about walking out where the shooting occurred, just doing a little march, but we can’t be out right now.”

Arbery was killed only three days before the anniversary of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, who was chased and killed by a neighborhood vigilante, George Zimmerman, sparking the Black Lives Matter movement.

The New York Times secured documents that showed a prosecutor, who had Arbery’s case for a few weeks, told the cops that the pursuers had acted within the scope of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute, and that Travis McMichael, who held the shotgun, had acted in self-defense. The police report didn’t say whether Arbery was in possession of a weapon.

Arbery's family is demanding that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation take over the investigation and pass on their findings to a special prosecutor.