By Kymani Hughes

A gruesome footage of the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery’s 25-year-old life went viral last week, showing him jogging on a suburban road in February as two armed white men arrive in a pickup truck. In the footage, the younger men tussle, gunshots boom, and Arbery staggers and then collapses.

Additional footage surfaced Saturday that is alleged to display the moments leading to the death of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, whose deadly shooting prompted public protests and calls for justice against local law enforcement officers who took more than two months to apprehend suspects in the killing.

On Thursday night the Georgia Investigation Department charged former police officer Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael on suspicion of murder and aggravated assault. After Arbery’s death, the elder McMichael told officers that there had been a series of neighborhood burglaries recently, and when he saw Arbery jogging down a residential road on February 23, he thought he was the culprit.

On Saturday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution released CCTV video showing a man entering a house under construction that day shortly before the attack, staying for a few minutes, and then jogging to the location where Arbery was later approached by the people. The Georgia Investigation Bureau has confirmed that the video is part of their investigation but has not identified the figure.

Lee Merritt, an attorney representing the Arbery family, released a statement Saturday stating that Arbery is assumed to be the person in the video.

“He engaged in no illegal activity and remained for only a brief period,” Merritt’s statement read. “Ahmaud did not take anything from the construction site. He did not cause any damage to the property.”

The video reveals Arbery’s “murder was not warranted, and unjustified was the acts of the people who ambushed him,” Merritt’s statement reads.

His death has now unleashed uproar across the nation, with the hashtag “#IRunWithMaud” becoming a social cry about racial injustice in America. Hundreds of people gathered in Brunswick, Georgia, at Sidney Lanier Park on May 9th to honor the memory of Ahmaud Arbery.

The prosecution went by two attorneys, who recused themselves on behalf of past job relations with Gregory McMichael, and is now being prosecuted by the adjacent Atlantic Judicial Circuit’s Georgia Division of Investigation and District Attorney Tom Durden. The State Attorney General has vowed to review the prosecution of Arbery’s murder by city authorities.

Critics say the two investigators who openly recused themselves advised the police secretly to defer or cease from capturing the McMichaels. Gregory McMichael had been an examiner for the district prosecutor’s office and a county police officer. Those ties ignited concerns that the world in criminal justice was watching out for one of its own.

Durden, the third district attorney assigned to the case, said he would give it to a grand jury but changed route after the video leaked outside of law enforcement circles and public outrage intensified. Within 36 hours of the leak, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was assigned the case, and the McMichaels were arrested. 

Two commissioners from Glynn County — Peter Murphy and Allen Booker — said a federal probe is required. Local detectives requested help from District Attorney Jackie Johnson’s office immediately after Arbery was killed — a standard procedure in murders or potentially contentious situations, according to a press release from Glynn County on Saturday. According to the statement, officials within the prosecutor’s office informed investigators that the McMichaels were deemed now not to be flight risks and officers had been recommended via the DA’s workplace that no arrests had been necessary at the time.

Two days later Johnson had recused herself. George Barnhill Sr., a local Waycross lawyer, was assigned the prosecution but advised police the crime was a justifiable homicide. 

Johnson did not return any calls or emails seeking comment, and Barnhill declined to comment on an open inquiry.

Barnhill likewise recused himself in the wake of being forced by Arbery’s mom, who raised worries that the examiner’s child used to work with Gregory McMichael in the Brunswick lead prosecutor’s office, as indicated by a letter Barnhill kept in touch with the Glynn County Police Department.

As he excluded himself from the case, Barnhill took the unprecedented step of advising law enforcement that he did not see the justification for the McMichaels’ convictions, claiming that their acts were legal because they made a citizen’s arrest of a suspect they felt was engaged in a robbery.

“It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived,” Barnhill wrote. “Under Georgia Law, this is perfectly legal.”

However, a few legal specialists declare that Barnhill’s utilization of the express citizen’s arrest law is defective on the grounds that the rule necessitates that the offense is carried out in the individual’s presence or under sensible grounds of doubt if the wrongdoing is a crime.

As a continuation of the proceeding with the trial into Arbery’s demise, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported it is likewise investigating Willian “Roddy” Bryan, the man who recorded Arbery’s deadly shooting. Bryan’s lawyer, Kevin Gough, discharged an announcement Friday that his customer had done nothing incorrectly and had completely helped out law enforcement.

But according to the police report, Greg McMichael told officers that “ ‘Roddy’ attempted to block” Arbery as the men pursued him but “was unsuccessful.”

Gough said demands for Bryan ‘s arrest “have completely ruined his life.” He has lost his work and is facing death threats towards him and his relatives.

There were strong demands in Brunswick and surrounding counties for the officials concerned to withdraw or be recalled. Fer-Rell Malone Sr., pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church in Waycross, on Saturday guided a protest group along city streets to point out a push to recall Barnhill regarding the Arbery shooting examination.

Arbery’s relatives, a motorcycle club, and hundreds of Brunswick people assembled in the shadow of the Sidney Lanier Bridge in another section of the county on Saturday to celebrate what would have been Arbery’s 26th birthday — and lament his passing.

Regarding the trial, the date will be laid out in future court hearings. Prior to putting a respondent being investigated, she or he should be prosecuted, and Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney Tom Durden won’t have the option to introduce proof to a grand jury until the state Supreme Court’s coronavirus limitations are lifted June 12.