Ahmaud Arbery trial: Killers did everything on assumption, prosecutor says

White men in pickup trucks chased Ahmaud Arbery for five minutes, and one threatened to shoot him, as they cut off his escape from a Georgia subdivision and ultimately killed the 25-year-old Black man with a shotgun, a prosecutor told a trial jury Friday. 

In her opening statement, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said the short cellphone video that stirred national outrage over the slaying gave only a glimpse of the attack on Arbery, who gave his pursuers no reason to suspect him of any wrongdoing. 

“They assumed that he must have committed some crime that day,” Dunikoski said. “He tried to run around their truck and get way from these strangers, total strangers, who had already told him that they would kill him. And then they killed him.” 

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Arbery’s killing on Feb. 23, 2020, was largely ignored until the video leaked and deepened a national reckoning over racial injustice. 

Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck as he ran through their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase and recorded graphic video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times. 

The chase started on a Sunday afternoon when a neighbor called a nonemergency police number after seeing Arbery wandering inside a home under construction, where security cameras had recorded him before. 

Greg McMichael saw Arbery run past his home and ran inside to alert his son. They grabbed guns, jumped in their truck and gave chase, Dunikoski said. Bryan joined them after seeing Arbery run past the McMichaels’ truck outside his home. 

She said Greg McMichael later told police that at one point during the chase…