A Georgia prosecutor said Tuesday that he wants a grand jury to decide if criminal charges are warranted in the death of a man shot after a pursuit by armed men who later told police they suspected him of being a burglar.
Former Rep. and Tea Party leader, Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., wants to know what took so long.
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Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed Feb. 23 in a neighborhood outside the coastal port city of Brunswick. No one has been arrested or charged in the case, prompting condemnation from both liberal and conservative leaders. Arbery was black and the men who chased him and gunned him down from a pickup truck are white.
Once video came out of the incident, the decision not to prosecute the men caused an outcry. Gowdy is questioning why it took that long.
“I guess my first question would be, why did it take the video [becoming public]?” Gowdy asked Fox News host Dana Perino. “If you have someone who is jogging, who is unarmed, who is shot and killed by officers who aren’t officers — they aren’t even law enforcement officers — why did they take video?”
“It’s a pretty low evidentiary threshold [for an indictment], it’s probable cause and it’s nowhere near enough to get a conviction,” Gowdy said. “But that’s all it takes to get an arrest. You can indict anything you want to indict so I will be watching what this specially appointed prosecutor does.”
“All I want to do is get justice for my son,” said Marcus Arbery, the slain man’s father, who said his son was out jogging when he was killed. “This is terrible. It could happen to anybody’s kid.”
The announcement that a grand jury will review the case came as an attorney for Arbery’s mother posted a cellphone video on Twitter that he said shows the shooting. “This is murder,” lawyer Lee Merritt said.
Warning: This footage is graphic.
Tom Durden, an outside prosecutor assigned to examine the case, said he plans to have a grand jury hear the evidence in the shooting. That won’t happen for more than a month, as Georgia courts remain largely closed because of the coronavirus until at least June 13.
“I am of the opinion that the case should be presented to the grand jury of Glynn County for consideration of criminal charges against those involved in the death of Mr. Arbery,” Durden said in a statement Tuesday.
Reached by phone, Durden said no arrests have been made in connection with the shooting. He declined to say what charges he would have a grand jury consider.
The cellphone video, initially posted by a Brunswick radio station, shows a black man running at a jogging pace on the left side of a two-lane road. A truck is parked in the road ahead of him, with one man in the pickup bed and another standing beside the open driver’s side door.
The runner crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck. A gunshot sounds, and the video shows the runner grappling with a man in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle. A second shot can be heard and the runner can be seen punching the man. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. The runner staggers a few feet and falls face down.
“I think the video is very clear that they were on the truck with guns hunting him down,” said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Arbery’s father. “I don’t know what more you need to make an arrest.”
Durden declined to comment Tuesday when the prosecutor was asked if he could verify that the video showed the shooting of Arbery.
The Associated Press contributed to this article