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White Father And Son Charged With Murder In Black Man’s Death

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — More than two months after a black man was shot to death while running through a Georgia neighborhood, the white father and son arrested in the case were arraigned on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault Friday.

The investigation by local authorities had seemed stalled until this week, when a video of the shooting was shared widely on social media, prompting outrage across the nation.

“All that matters is what the facts tell us,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vic Reynolds said Friday, noting that his agency brought charges a day after it was brought into the case. Reynolds said “every stone will be uncovered” in the investigation of the Feb. 23 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.

Addressing the question of racial intent, Reynolds noted that Georgia has no hate crime law. That has prompted many civil rights activists to call for a federal investigation.

Arrest warrants for Gregory and Travis McMichael filed in court Friday confirmed, as the initial police report stated, that Travis McMichael “pointed and discharged a shotgun … at Ahmaud Arbery.” But there were no new details.

In a letter to Glynn County police in early April, a prosecutor previously assigned to the case outlined reasons he believed there was “insufficient probable cause to issue arrest warrants” in the case. Waycross D.A. George E. Barnhill argued that the McMichaels’ actions were legal under Georgia laws on citizen’s arrests, the open carry of guns and self-defense.

The McMichaels told police they pursued Arbery, with another person recording them on video, after spotting him running in their neighborhood. The father and son said they thought he matched the appearance of a burglary suspect who they said had been recorded on a surveillance camera some time before.

Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, has said she thinks her son, a former high school football player, was just jogging in the Satilla Shores neighborhood before he was killed.

Arbery would have turned 26 on Friday, and a crowd of several hundred people, most wearing masks, sang “Happy Birthday” in his honor outside the Glynn County Courthouse.

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