“I got a trespasser,” English told the operator, saying he could see on camera a “colored guy” with tattoos on his arms and curly hair and who may have been drunk or on drugs as he was “plundering around” the property. He knew local kids sometimes roamed about the property, which was unfenced, and worried about people having an accident around the boat dock out back, so he installed surveillance cameras that sent videos to his phone.Ī clip of Arbery walking around the dock at night in October 2019 was played, along with a recording of the 911 call English made. “My dream was to have a place on the water,” he said. In it, Larry English said he had been slowly building a house in Satilla Shores, which would end up setting in motion the events that led to Arbery’s killing. Their lawyers are arguing this was justified self-defense.ĭuring the fifth day of witness testimony on Thursday the jury was played a video deposition recorded in September. They chased him in two pickup trucks for several minutes, closing in on him and attempting to block his path, before the younger McMichael pointed a shotgun and fired as Arbery ran toward him and appeared to reach toward the weapon. The defendants have argued they thought Arbery might have been fleeing a crime, rather than going on one of his regular jogs in the area, and they pursued in an attempt to make a citizen’s arrest when he ran through Satilla Shores, a suburb of the small coastal city of Brunswick, south-eastern Georgia, in February 2020.
Speaking outside the Glynn county courthouse as the trial opened, Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said she found the final jury’s racial makeup “devastating” but was confident the jury would “make the right decision”. The trial is in its second week of hearing arguments and evidence in a case closely watched and widely regarded as a litmus test for the state of racial justice in the US. They face life in prison if convicted of murder. The jury was shown video on Thursday of Ahmaud Arbery walking around a vacant property on an earlier visit to the mostly white southern Georgia neighborhood where the 25-year-old Black man was later fatally shot after being chased by the three white men.ĭefendants Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, have pleaded not guilty to murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment. “But we’re missing a segment of what would normally be here.”ĭefense attorneys representing the three white men accused of murdering Arbery eventually struck all but one potential Black juror, meaning the jury for the case consists of 11 white members and one Black member, vastly out of proportion with the county demographics. “We want a diverse jury,” he said in the interview. Gough previously said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the jury selection pool in the case did not have enough “bubbas or Joe six-packs”, meaning white men over 40 without a college degree.
He added: “This objection was clearly pointed at me and a disregard to the fact that a mother and father sitting in a courtroom with three men that murdered their son do not deserve the right to have someone present to give spiritual strength to bear this pain. Sharpton said in a statement: “The arrogant insensitivity of attorney Kevin Gough in asking a judge to bar me or any minister of the family’s choice underscores the disregard for the value of the human life lost and the grieving of a family in need spiritual and community support.” Walmsley refused Gough’s request, stating: “I’m not going to start blanketly excluding members of the public from this courtroom.”
We don’t want anymore Black pastors in here or others" /VIIGZYFBNq- Hayley Mason November 11, 2021Īs others in the court discussed Sharpton’s presence in the court room, Gough went on to say, “If a bunch of folks came in here dressed like Colonel Sanders with white masks … ” before being cut off. If their pastor’s Rev Al Sharpton right now that’s fine.
"There’s only so many pastors they can have. Kevin Gough tells judge he has an issue with Black pastors coming to sit with Arbery family in court.