Atlanta remembers Ahmaud Arbery 3 years after shooting
ATLANTA - Thursday marks three years since Ahmaud Arbery was killed after being chased down and shot while jogging through a south Georgia community.
On Feb. 23, 2020, at the age of 25, Arbery was out for what would be his final run through a Glynn County subdivision. As he always did, Arbery ran out the door of his mother house, down the long street toward Fancy Bluff Road. Then turned right onto the two-lane road lined by oak trees draped with Spanish moss.
About a mile and a half into his usual route, Arbery would cross the four lanes of Jekyll Island Causeway into the subdivision of Satilla Shores. Two trials have established there was no way Arbery would have known of the deadly trap laid for him by a father and son and a man pursuing him in his pickup truck recording the whole thing.
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Ahmaud Arbery (Family photo)
That day, Gregory McMichael, his son Travis and William "Roddie" Bryan armed themselves with guns and used a pickup truck to chase Arbery after he ran past their home on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan, a neighbor, joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun. The McMichaels told police they suspected Arbery was a burglar, but investigators determined he was unarmed and had committed no crimes.
No arrests were made for more than two months, until the graphic cellphone video leaked online and Georgia state investigators took over the case from local police. Arbery’s death reverberated far beyond Brunswick as protests erupted across the U.S. over killings of unarmed Black people such as George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
A cross with flowers and a letter A sits at the entrance to the Satilla Shores neighborhood where Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed May 7, 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
In February 2020, a federal jury convicted the McMichaels and Bryan of violating Arbery’s civil rights, concluding they targeted him because of his race. All three were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels were convicted of using guns in the commission of a violent crime.
In the hate crimes trial, prosecutors fortified their case that Arbery’s killing was motivated by racism by showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about Black people.
More than two years of criminal proceedings against Arbery’s killers concluded in August 2022 as U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced the McMichaels to life and Bryan to 35 years in prison after their February convictions on federal hate crime charges. All three were already headed to state prison after being found guilty of Arbery’s murder the year before.
Last year, the state of Georgia declared Feb. 23 Ahmaud Arbery Day to mark the gravity of his death and the subsequent criminal and federal cases.
The resolution describes Arbery as a loving son, brother, uncle, grandson, nephew, cousin, and friend "who left an impact on countless Georgians and Americans."
His mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, is expected to speak during an invitation-only event on Thursday. The event will also feature author Alison Mariella Désir who wrote "Running While Black". It is co-sponsored by the Atlanta Track Club and the Ahmaud Arbery Foundation.
Meanwhile, runners are expected to once again put on their running shoes in his memory. The Ahmaud Arbery Day Run is a 2.23-mile run that will take place at 6 p.m. along the West End Trail.
A mural depicting Ahmaud Arbery on July 17, 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
Who was Ahmaud Arbery?
Ahmaud Marquez Arbery was born May 8, 1994. He was the youngest of three children, answering to the affectionate nicknames "Maud" and "Quez."
Those who knew him speak of a seemingly bottomless reservoir of kindness he used to encourage others, of an easy smile and infectious laughter that could lighten just about any situation.
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As a teenager, he stuck to the family home so markedly that his family worried he never wanted to go out with friends. "And I was like, he’ll get to the stage eventually," his mother Wanda Cooper-Jones said. "He was a mama’s boy at first."
Annie Polite puts on a button for Ahmaud Arbery outside the Glynn County Courthouse as the jury deliberates in the trial of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery on November 24, 2021 in Brunswick, Georgia. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
As his mother predicted, that reserve was left behind when Arbery entered Brunswick High School’s Class of 2012.
He took cues from his brother, Marcus Jr., and tried out for the Brunswick Pirates football team. His slender build certainly didn’t make him a shoo-in for linebacker on the junior varsity squad, said Jason Vaughn, his former coach and a U.S. history teacher at the school.
"As soon as practice started and Ahmaud started to really go, oh man, his speed was amazing," his former football coach Jason Vaughn recalled with a laugh. "He was undersized, but his heart was huge."
Off the field, Ahmaud had a talent for raising the spirits of people around him — and a penchant for imitating his coach, Vaughn said.
"If I was standing in the hallway, kind of looking mean or having a bad day — maybe my lesson plan didn’t go right — Maud could kind of sense that about me," Vaughn said. "He’d come stand beside me and be like, ‘I’m Coach Vaughn today. Y’all keep going to class. Hurry up, hurry up! Don’t be tardy! Don’t be late!’ That’s what I loved about him. He was always trying to make people smile."
"Some students it’s hard to get mad at," he said, "because you love them so much."
After high school and some struggles with the law, Arbery enrolled at South Georgia Technical College, preparing to become an electrician, just like his uncles. But first, he decided, he would take a break. College could wait until the fall.
"Ahmaud was just ready to put himself in a position to be where he wanted to be in life," Cooper-Jones said. "That’s what they took from him."