🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Ahmaud Arbery's father, Marcus Arbery Sr., exited the courtroom before closeup graphic photos of his son's body were shown to jurors.
The trial for the three men charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery, a black man from Georgia, continued Monday. Arbery, 25, was shot from a close range after being chased by white men in a pickup truck who saw him jogging in their neighborhood.
Arbery's slaying is one of many killings that received national attention in the last year due to the racial undertones of the case.
Glynn Country police Sergeant Shelia Ramos displayed dozens of crime scene photos she took roughly an hour after the February 23, 2020 shooting. Some of the pictures showed the gaping hole from the gunshot wound in Arbery's chest and injuries to his wrist and underneath his arm. Another picture depicted Arbery's body on the street covered with a bloody tarp.
Ramos said she collected two spent shotgun shells at the scene, and investigators found a third fired shell still inside the bloodstained 12-gauge shotgun.
While some of the jurors were seen squirming as the photos were shown, Ahmaud Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones remained in the courtroom.
Most of the jurors for the Friday trial are disproportionately white.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:
Prosecutors complained at the end of jury selection last week that several Black potential jurors were excluded because of their race, leaving only one Black juror on the panel of 12.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley said he found that "intentional discrimination" by defense attorneys appeared to have shaped jury selection. But he said Georgia law limited his authority to intervene.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and used a pickup truck to pursue Arbery after they spotted him running in their neighborhood. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street at close range.
No arrests were made for more than two months, until the video of the killing leaked online and sparked a national outcry, deepening a national reckoning over racial injustice. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Both McMichaels and Bryan were soon charged with murder and other crimes.
Defense attorneys said the men were justified to chase and attempt to detain Arbery because he had been recorded by security cameras inside a nearby home under construction and they suspected he was a burglar. They said Travis McMichael fired in self-defense when Arbery attacked him with fists and tried to grab his gun.
