The owners of a half-built home where unarmed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery may have stopped before being chased down and shot dead denounced the “vigilante response” by two white men charged in the killing.
The English family said in a statement Monday that they have no connection with Gregory McMichael, a former cop who is charged, along with is son, with murder in Arbery’s Feb. 23 death — and even raised doubt that the man caught on video at the construction site was Arbery.
“First and most important, the English family — the homeowners — want Ahmaud Arbery’s parents to know that they are very sorry for the loss of their son and are praying for them,” said the statement, published by Atlanta’s WSB-TV.
“Second, it is crucial to understand that the English family — the homeowners — were not part of what the McMichaels did,” the family said. “The first accounts suggested a link between the McMichaels and the homeowners, but there is none. The English family had no relationship with the McMichaels and did not even know what had occurred until after Mr. Arbery’s death was reported to them.”
Surveillance footage released this weekend shows a man believed to be Arbery inside a home under construction owned by the English family.
The man remained inside the home looking around for about three minutes. Shortly thereafter, Arbery, 25, was jogging nearby when the McMichaels pulled up in a pickup truck and blocked his path. Gregory McMichael’s 34-year-old son, Travis, is seen on cellphone video leaving the truck and confronting Arbery.
After a struggle, Arbery is shot at point-blank range and falls mortally wounded.
The case lingered until the video was released last week, prompting the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to charge both McMichaels with murder.
The McMichaels told police they believed Arbery was a burglar.
But in the statement Monday, the English family said they weren’t even sure it was Arbery in the video inside their property.
“After seeing Mr. Arbery’s photo in news reports, Larry English did not even think Mr. Arbery was the person that appears in the video,” the statement said. “Even if it had been, however, Mr. English would never have sought a vigilante response, much less on resulting in a tragic death.”
