Ahmaud Arbery may have had previous run-in with alleged killers"A new witness in the case told police he believes Arbery was the man who was poking around a construction site in the Brunswick neighborhood on Feb. 11 — 12 days before the unarmed black jogger was shot dead nearby by two white men, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Diego Perez said the owner of the construction site, Larry English, texted him a security video on Feb. 11 and told him someone was trespassing on the property. He asked Perez to check it out — which he did after arming himself, the outlet reported.
That’s when Travis McMichael — who is now charged with Arbery’s murder, along with his father, Gregory McMichael — pulled up, Perez said.
“Travis saw him in the yard and Travis stopped,” Perez told the Journal-Constitution. “He confronted (the man) halfway into the yard. He said (the man) reached for his waistband, and Travis got spooked and went down the road.”
Travis McMichael, 34, then returned with his 64-year-old father — both of them armed — but the man was gone, Perez said.
Perez said the trespasser had been seen at the site in security videos months earlier.
Arbery was spotted at the site on Feb. 23, when surveillance footage shows him looking around the half-built house before he continues jogging down the block. That’s when the McMichaels pull up in a pickup truck, block Arbery’s path, and confront the unarmed jogger, cellphone video shows."
That cross-examination ought to be a hoot.
'Now, Mr. Perez, when Mr. English texted you the video of the trespasser on his property, did he ask you to go over there?'
'Yup.'
'Did you share that video with the McMichael's and the other trespass videos too?'
'Yup.'
'Did you recognize the trespasser? Was it the same person in the other trespass videos? Was it the deceased?'
'Yup.'
"Barnhill argued in his recusal letter that the McMichaels had “solid first hand probable cause” that Arbery was a burglary suspect. Barnhill did not elaborate on what that probable cause was or how he’d reached that conclusion, although two thefts had occurred in the neighborhood in the first two months of the year. One was a theft of $2,500 worth of fishing equipment from English’s property, which he said he didn’t report to police but confirmed to The Daily Beast. The second report was of the theft of a 9mm handgun from Travis McMichael’s unlocked truck, which was first obtained by the Brunswick News.In his letter, Barnhill said that “Arbery’s mental health records and prior convictions help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man.” Arbery was convicted of bringing a handgun to Brunswick High School in 2013, court records show. He was also convicted of stealing a television from Walmart in 2017."