Good question, and it largely turns on some facts we don’t know. I can’t tell what the younger McMichael was doing with the shotgun. Would make a difference if he pointed it at the suspect. Two principles are at issue:
1) A citizen’s arrest, if properly predicated, must be done with reasonable force. So, if I try to arrest someone who is egging my house, I can’t point a gun at him. If I think he was breaking into my car, more force could be used.
2) If an arrest is UNLAWFUL, Arbery could use force to resist the arrest. His use of force must be reasonable as well. The same standards as #1 would apply.
I’m Arbery, and two dudes in a pickup truck chase me down a street. How the hell am I supposed to know they’re “arresting” me instead of abducting and robbing me?
>> I can’t tell what the younger McMichael was doing with the shotgun. Would make a difference if he pointed it at the suspect.
If the intent always was to shoot him dead, why the hesitation to shoot as the suspect ran up around the truck? It wouldn’t have been a legal shoot him just for charging but everybody is speculating it was always the intent.
The first shot is fired as they are already in a scuffle in front of the truck).
They continue to wrestle awhile before they move to the left of the truck and a second shot is fired. And they continue to wrestle until the third deadly shot is fired.
If two men were armed with the intent at the outset to kill, why so much hesitation? I fail to see it was the full intent.
In most states you can’t use deadly force to arrest someone for the misdemeanor of trespassing.
Here’s why I say he was not pointing the gun at him.
Once AA started him, he would have shot him THEN.
I was raised in the south and live in texas and there isnt one redneck I know ( I have half a dozen brothers I KNOW how rednecks think and respond when it comes to guns and no redneck raised by a southern LEO would let another man get to him to grab his gun if he had it pointed at him. Jus. no. Way.
Plus as soon as the come into frame struggling over the gun, you can tell there’s no way you go from a ready to shoot aiming stance to back in your heels in that manner. The shooter was not ready to shoot or engage at all.