Didn’t happen. Arbery charged the man who shot him.
The media coverage in this case is far worse than what I saw for Kyle. From the testimony I’ve seen and the video evidence, though, the Arbery case appears to be another clear case of self defense. You have to have seen the defense’s questioning of Travis McMichael (the shooter) to understand what led him to be standing by his truck with a shotgun. Earlier no weapon had been shown to Arbery. It wasn’t on display when he was asked to stop, or when he was told that the police had been called, which caused Arbery to run off in another direction. Hmm...is that suspicious or not?
According to Travis’s testimony he’d also seen Arbery trying to force his way into the other truck that had followed him (and if I recall correctly, fingerprints were found on it). This increased Travis’s belief that Arbery was potentially dangerous. After seeing that, Travis sees Arbery come down the road toward him and his father (not the final time but shortly before the final time). Travis and his father had given up following Arbery and had taken a position where they could guide any arriving police in the direction in which they’d last seen him. This next-to-last approach takes place toward the end of the incidents, and Arbery is no longer sprinting but “jogging”.
Travis is standing by the door to his truck but doesn’t have his weapon out yet (not only was there a reasonable expectation of danger when Arbery was shot, but there was one each time Travis took out his weapon). Arbery, rather than running on the other side of the road, runs directly toward him, just as he did the final time. Don’t you think that’s significant?
Travis fears he’s about to be attacked, he yells at Arbery to stop, and when Arbery gets about 20 feet away, he pulls out the shotgun — that’s the first time Arbery has seen a weapon — and points it directly at him. Arbery sees it and immediately reverses course, and heads back in the opposite direction, disappearing around the bend. Travis and his father don’t pursue him.
This was almost a rehearsal for the shooting itself, but this first time Arbery turns away and doesn’t attack.
Then that makes all the difference in the world.