No burglaries were reported in neighborhood where Ahmaud Arbery was killed, contradicting suspects’ claim: report

Gregory McMichael (left), and his son Travis McMichael were arrested on Thursday.
Gregory McMichael (left), and his son Travis McMichael were arrested on Thursday.(Glynn County Detention Center)

An explanation for the Ahmaud Arbery killing became shakier on Friday.

The two Georgia men who were caught on video shooting the unarmed jogger to death in February claim they were chasing a suspect behind a series of burglaries in the area. But a local police official said the last break-in the neighborhood was reported nearly two months before the shooting.

The last known burglary in the neighborhood happened on Jan. 1, more than seven weeks before the Feb. 23 incident that ended Arbery’s life at the age of 25, Glynn County Police Lt. Cheri Bashlor told CNN on Friday.

People react during a rally to protest the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man, Friday, May 8, in Brunswick Ga.
People react during a rally to protest the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man, Friday, May 8, in Brunswick Ga. (John Bazemore/AP)

The New Year Day’s police report states that a 9-mm. pistol was stolen from an unlocked truck outside the home of Gregory and Travis McMichael, the father and son who on Thursday were charged with murder.

A disturbing video that surfaced online this week shows Arbery jogging on a rural road in Satilla Shores, a small community outside Brunswick, when two men who appeared to be following him confront and fatally shoot him for no apparent reason.

The killing and the two-month wait for an arrest have rattled the community and led to accusations of racial profiling against the two white suspects. Arbery, a black man who would have turned 26 on Friday, was known to the area and would sometimes wave to his neighbors, according to his family.

This image from video posted on Twitter Tuesday, May 5, purports to show Ahmaud Arbery stumbling and falling to the ground after being shot as Travis McMichael stands by holding a shotgun in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Ga., on Feb. 23.
This image from video posted on Twitter Tuesday, May 5, purports to show Ahmaud Arbery stumbling and falling to the ground after being shot as Travis McMichael stands by holding a shotgun in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Ga., on Feb. 23. (AP)

“I just want justice for my son,” the victim’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., told CNN. “I just want them to pay the price for the crime they did.”


The grieving father compared the incident to modern-day lynching.


“Any time you pursue a young man, go jump in a truck with shotguns and a pistol ... and you follow him and slaughter him like that, that’s lynching,” he said.


A man believed to be Gregory McMichael called 911 seconds before the shooting to report “a black male running down the street,” audio recordings show. But the caller never described what kind of crime was allegedly being committed.


A second 911 audio recording from minutes earlier shows another caller complaining about a black man he claimed was at a house under construction.


“OK. That’s fine. I’ll get them out there,” the dispatcher said, referring to the cops. “I just need to know what he was doing wrong. Was he just on the premises and not supposed to be?”


The caller’s reply was not clearly audible and there was no mention of a specific crime, but he said the man had previously been “caught on camera” in the area and that the situation was an ongoing problem.



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