The man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery last year
testified before court Thursday that the 25-year-old Black man had not
threatened him in any way. Explaining why he shot Arbery, the accused said that
the Black man’s demeanour struck him as ‘suspicious’ when he first approached
him to question him about a crime in his Georgia neighbourhood, but
acknowledged that Arbery had not threatened him in any manner.

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According to accused Travis McMichael, his neighbours
had indicated that some crime had occurred down the road and he then saw Arbery
running. McMichael pulled up his truck near Arbery with a shotgun pointed to
the floor beside him. Arbery stopped, but then took off when McMichael told him
that the police were on their way, the accused told the court.

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While claims were made earlier about whether Arbery
posed a threat to any of the accused’s lives, Travis McMichael, in his
testimony, acknowledged that Arbery had neither threatened nor yelled at him or
show him any weapons. Instead, the 25-year-old kept mum and moving.

During cross-examination Thursday, the prosecutor
asked McMichael, “He just ran?”, to which the accused said, “Yes, he was just
running.” The prosecutor then went on to ask how many times McMichael had
previously stopped people in his neighbourhood what they were doing there, to
which McMichael said never.

The prosecutor also pressed McMichael on why he did
not lay out the facts as he was doing in the testimony in his written statement
to the police. McMichael said that he was under stress, nervous and scared
during his police interview. “I just killed a man. I had blood on myself. It
was the most traumatic event of my life,” said McMichael.

Thursday was the second day of McMichael’s testimony.
On Wednesday, he said that Arbery had made him take a split-second
life-or-death decision by grabbing his shotgun and attacking him.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging down a Brunswick
neighbourhood on February 23, 2020 when three men — Travis McMichael, his
father Gregory, who followed him on a pick-up truck and William Bryan who
followed on a second vehicle — confronted him. Travis McMichael later shot
Arbery.   

With inputs from Associated Press