Georgia's attorney general asks Justice Department to investigate Ahmaud Arbery case

(Image credit: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

published 11 May 2020

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said Sunday he has asked the Justice Department to investigate how local officials handled the Feb. 23 shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man shot dead by two white men while he was jogging near Brunswick. "We are committed to a complete and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case was handled from the outset," Carr said in a statement. "The family, the community, and the state of Georgia deserve answers."

Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, were arrested and charged with murder last week after a video emerged showing them chasing Arbery down and killing him. The man who leaked the video, Alan David Tucker, had reportedly consulted with the McMichaels before releasing it and told The New York Times he gave it to a radio station so show the gunmen weren't "two men with a Confederate flag in the back of a truck going down the road and shooting a jogger in the back."

Carr said he was asking the Justice Department to look into not just the killing but how the district attorneys handled the case. The Brunswick district attorney recused herself because Gregory McMichael had worked as an investigator in her office, and a second D.A. — whose son had worked with McMichael — also recused himself later after recommending no charges in the case. "I think had we not seen that video, I don't believe that they would be charged," Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told CNN on Sunday. "It's heartbreaking that it's 2020, and this was a lynching of an African-American man."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.