This is a man who was on probation. If I were on probation, I wouldn’t have entered the house even during the day. He’d been given 5 years for showing up at a basketball game with a pistol in his waistband. It’s not known whether he had hopes of stealing something from the site, but he’d never been seen by anyone jogging in the neighborhood, and video shows him walking, not jogging, up to the house the day of the shooting. Then he sprints out, not jogs, when he sees someone across the street with a phone observing him. The only time he jogs is toward the end when he tires from running.
What really matters, though, occurs at the end, and that too is on video. The video shows that when Arbery goes around the right side of the truck, he has an open path of escape ahead of him. Instead of taking it, though, he makes a sharp left turn and charges in front of the truck and attacks Travis McMichael, who — this is important — hasn’t blocked his way and has remained on the left side of the truck.
McMichael’s life was clearly at risk then, and despite the distortions in the media — and from politicians on both sides of the political spectrum — he should have been able to defend himself. However annoyed this on-probation criminal may have been about being pursued earlier when the neighborhood residents rightly identified him as the suspect the police wanted to interrogate, he didn’t have the right to make that sharp left turn and start a life-or-death struggle with McMichael. It’s his own fault he’s dead. It’s outrageous that these men who were rightly concerned about what was happened their neighborhood have been charged with murder.
>> It’s outrageous that these men who were rightly concerned about what was happened their neighborhood have been charged with murder. <<
I meant: It’s outrageous that these men who were rightly concerned about what was happening in their neighborhood have been charged with murder.