One of the men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery in a southern Georgia suburb in 2020 bloodied himself as he examined the black jogger's body, looking in vain for a weapon, a police officer told a court on Tuesday.
Gregory McMichael is one of three white men on trial for the killing of Arbery, who they say they suspected may have been fleeing a crime when they pursued him in vehicles, cornered him and shot him on a street in their mostly white neighbourhood.
Arbery's family and their supporters say the 25 year-old was pursued because he was black.
Mr McMichael told police that Arbery was moving fast through the neighbourhood.
“I'm talking about a dead run. He’s not jogging,” Glynn County police officer Jeff Brandeberry quoted Mr McMichael as saying, as he read a transcript of a video recording from his body camera.
Mr McMichael, his son, Travis McMichael, and neighbour, William “Roddie” Bryan, have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment for their deadly pursuit of Arbery on February 23, 2020.
They face life in prison if convicted by a jury composed of 11 white people and one black person.
Prosecutors have said the men “assumed the worst” of Arbery as he ran through the Satilla Shores neighbourhood outside Brunswick, which had experienced some recent thefts from cars.
After Arbery was trapped by the three men, he was seen on video reaching out for the younger Mr McMichael's shotgun.
Arbery was shot three times at close range.
Mr Brandeberry said he arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting and interviewed the elder Mr McMichael, who had blood on his right hand.
The officer testified that Mr McMichael got blood on himself when he moved Arbery's arm as he lay prone on the ground after the shooting to check him for a weapon.
“I didn't know if [Arbery] had a weapon or not,” Mr McMichael told the officer while explaining why he had touched the body, the transcript read to the jury said.
Arbery was unarmed.
The elder Mr McMichael said he shouted at Arbery from his vehicle to stop running.
“Stop, stop, stop, [expletive] it,” Mr McMichael said, according to the transcript. He had been armed with a pistol he fetched after seeing Arbery run down the street.
“I don’t take any chances,” Mr McMichael, a former policeman, told the officer.
Most of Tuesday's evidence was focused on Mr Brandeberry and another Glynn County police officer, Detective Parker Marcy. Both interviewed the elder Mr McMichael.
Mr McMichael, who began the armed chase of Arbery, told Mr Marcy that he thought Arbery might have committed a crime, the detective told the jury.
He told the detective he “wanted to hold Arbery for the police, so he could be arrested, or identified at the very least,” a transcript of Mr Marcy's interview at the county police headquarters read.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski asked whether the elder Mr McMichael had ever told the detective that he was trying to “detain” or “arrest” Arbery.
Mr McMichael had not, Mr Marcy replied.
The accused have argued they were trying to make a citizen's arrest under a state law that Georgia has since repealed.
INFO
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
EGYPT SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Ahmed El Shennawy, Mohamed El Shennawy, Mohamed Abou-Gabal, Mahmoud Abdel Rehem "Genesh"
Defenders: Ahmed Elmohamady, Ahmed Hegazi, Omar Gaber, Ali Gazal, Ayman Ahsraf, Mahmoud Hamdy, Baher Elmohamady, Ahmed Ayman Mansour, Mahmoud Alaa, Ahmed Abou-Elfotouh
Midfielders: Walid Soliman, Abdallah El Said, Mohamed Elneny, Tarek Hamed, Mahmoud “Trezeguet” Hassan, Amr Warda, Nabil Emad
Forwards: Ahmed Ali, Mohamed Salah, Marwan Mohsen, Ahmed "Kouka" Hassan.
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES
SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities
Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails
Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies
Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments
