NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three white men were sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African-American who was chased and killed in February 2020 in Georgia, in the southern United States, while ‘he was jogging.
Travis McMichael, 35, and his father Gregory McMichael, 66, will spend the rest of their lives in prison while their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, may seek early release after thirty years in prison. .
Travis, the perpetrator of the fatal shots, and Gregory McMichael had taken their guns, climbed into their pickup and stalked their young victim on a Sunday afternoon in the streets of the residential neighborhood of Satilla Shores, near Brunswick in the east. of Georgia, claiming afterwards that he had been persuaded that he had committed a crime.
Ahmaud Arbery’s family denounced the racist motivations behind their act. “They chose to target my son because they didn’t want him in their neighborhood,” said the young jogger’s mother. “When they saw that they couldn’t scare or intimidate him enough, they killed him.”
William Bryan, who was unarmed, had followed his two neighbors in his own pickup and filmed the murder scene on a cell phone.
The video, revealed to the public during the summer of 2020, had triggered a national scandal, especially as it then appeared that the local justice had initially considered that the murder was justified.
Speaking of a “freezing” murder, Judge Timothy Walmsley, who convicted the three men, said Ahmaud Arbery was “hunted down and shot because individuals wanted to make their own law”.
Defense lawyers have said they will appeal the verdict.
(Written by Jonathan Allen, with Rich McKay Atlanta; French version Jean-Stphane Brosse)
by Jonathan Allen