Mom of Ahmaud Arbery can’t bear to watch video of ‘modern lynching’
The mother of an unarmed black man shot dead while jogging says she can’t bring herself to watch a video of his slaying — and the family is demanding answers for the “modern lynching,” according to its lawyer.
Wanda Cooper-Jones, whose son, Ahmaud Arbery, was shot and killed by two white men while out of a run in southern Georgia in February, said she’s still struggling to cope with his tragic and senseless death, she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be in a mental state where I can actually watch the video,” Cooper-Jones said. “I had others that watched it that shared what they saw and that just was enough.”
The 28-second cell phone video, which has sparked national outrage after it was made public this week, Arbery, 25, is seen crossing a road in Brunswick near a pickup truck on Feb. 23. Two white men in the truck attempt to block his path, and one of the men gets out of the truck.
Arbery is seen grappling over a shotgun with a man in the street when the shots ring out. Arbery staggers several feet and falls down, mortally wounded.
The two men in the truck, Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, told police they believed Arbery was a burglar. Neither has been charged.
Cooper-Jones said she believes there’s been no action by authorities because Gregory McMichael, 64, is a recently retired investigator for the local district attorney’s office.
“I think that they don’t feel like he was wrong because he was one of them,” she said on the show. “I’m managing, it’s really hard. It’s really been hard.”
Attorneys for the McMichael’s did not return ABC’s calls for comment.
But S. Lee Merritt, an attorney for Abery’s family who has called the killing a “modern lynching,” want both men arrested.
“Prosecutors will need a grand jury in order to formally indict these men, but that has nothing to do with actually going out and arresting the men seen on camera murdering a 25-year-old unarmed black man,” Merritt told Good Morning America.
“The prosecutors actually have the option, if they so chose to, to (go) directly (to) indictment and skip the entire grand jury process,” he said. “It’s something that happens all the time in our legal system, and this would certainly be an appropriate moment.”