Story at a glance
- In February, Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in a neighborhood in Georgia when he was gunned down by a white father and son.
- Video of the fatal confrontation was recently released.
- A transcript of the 911 call is now shedding light on the incident.
In February, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in a neighborhood in Brunswick, Ga., when he was gunned down by a white father and son. The pair told police they went after Arbery because they believed he was a burglary suspect. Video of the fatal confrontation was recently released, and now a transcript of the 911 call is also shedding light on the suspicious circumstances that led three men to chase after and ultimately kill Arbery.
Local Georgia outlet The Brunswick News first reported the audio transcript toward the end of April, noting that the first call was made at approximately 1:08 pm EST. The 911 dispatcher received details about Arbery’s presence in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, where he was exercising.
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Arbery was shot during an altercation with Gregory McMichael, a retired Brunswick County Judicial Circuit District Attorney investigator and his son, Travis McMichael. The McMichaels pursued Arbery, who was reportedly jogging, in a pickup truck and eventually stopped Arbery to engage in a confrontation.
Arbery died at the scene.
Local authorities declined to arrest anyone at the time, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mounting public pressure has motivated the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), bringing national attention to the shooting and the surrounding details two months after it occurred.
During the 911 calls, the callers, who have yet to be identified, reported seeing a man in a house under construction along Satilla Drive. The caller said the person was not breaking and entering, as the home was under construction. The caller then says that the man was “running down the street.”
The 911 dispatcher notably says to the caller, “I just need to know what he was doing wrong,” and asked if he was trespassing.
Between inaudible sentences, the caller says: “he’s been caught on camera a bunch at night. It’s kind of an ongoing thing. The man building the house has got heart issues. I think he’s not going to finish it.”
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The dispatcher then asks for a confirmation of the man’s description, to which the caller replies “White T-shirt. Black guy, white T-shirt. He’s done run into the neighborhood again.”
The call ends with redacted privacy information about the caller, but a second call to 911 came in at 1:14 pm.
“I’m out here at Satilla Shores,” the second caller begins and proceeds to state that, “There’s a black male running down the street.”
The man allegedly shouts “Stop!” several times, with the call going silent for several minutes.
Meanwhile, The Brunswick News reports that Gregory McMichael went inside Travis’s home, armed himself and his son, and proceeded to chase Arbery down the street in Travis’s pickup truck. Travis reportedly asked Arbery to stop, and when he didn’t, the fatal altercation ensued, where Travis fired two shots.
The audio calls into question the McMichael’s statements that Arbery was a burglary suspect who had been caught on cameras multiple times. The Brunswick News notes that per county police reports, only one burglary was filed between Jan. 1 and Feb. 23: an automobile burglary involving a Smith & Wesson pistol stolen on Jan. 1 from a pickup truck outside of Travis McMichael’s Satilla Drive home.
The Arbery family’s attorney S. Lee Merrit released a statement on Twitter saying: “Mr. Arbery had not committed any crime and there was no reason for these men to believe they had the right to stop him with weapons or to use deadly force in furtherance of their unlawful attempted stop. This is murder.”
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr released a statement saying that “based on the footage and news reports that I have seen, I am deeply concerned with the events surrounding the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery,” and he expects “justice to be carried out as swiftly as possible, and I stand ready to support GBI Director Reynolds, DA Durden and the local community.”
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