He had an absolute right to do so. The man's a thief, he'd been caught numerous times on video, and he attacked the man holding a shotgun.
You run up and hit a man with a shotgun and try to take it away from him, you are a dead fool.
That won’t hold up in court, Matlock
He hadn’t stolen anything on that day. Both the video at the construction site and the owner of the house under construction have shown that. Arbery is no saint, but on that particular day, in that particular location, we know he didn’t steal anything. The McMichaels may have thought that he did, but he hadn’t.
As for who threatened or attacked whom during the confrontation, that’s not really possible to say because the video a) is terrible quality b) cuts away multiple times c) is blocked by the truck at the moment of the initial encounter and d) has no audio of any words spoken.
On the video, we see the McMichaels stopped in the middle of the street with Travis standing on the driver side holding his shotgun. Nothing illegal about any of that (unless you want to nitpick about obstructing traffic). We also see Arbery jogging/running down the street at a steady pace. Arbery veers right to go past the passenger side of the truck. Travis McMichael moves around to the front of the truck. At this point, we have no video or audio of what takes place. The next thing we can see is the two men are already fighting. That’s what the video shows; nothing more. Anything anyone else is adding to that is their own personal speculation on what happened and why. It isn’t fact and it doesn’t matter unless they’re sitting on the jury.
This cases hinges on what happened when Arbery and Travis McMichael met at the front of the truck. If Arbery simply attacked Travis McMichael without justifiable reason, Travis had every right to defend himself. If Travis threatened Arbery and Arbery had reason to fear for his life, Arbery had every right to defend himself. We don’t know what took place at the front of that truck and anyone who says they do is either lying themselves or lying to others, because it certainly isn’t shown on the video. The investigation and the trial will piece things together as best as possible and it’ll be up to 12 jurors to decide whether one or both of the McMichaels acted criminally under Georgia law.