Probably the most unsettling, racist thing I have seen in a long time.

Regardless of what may have preceded the shooting, it can’t be disputed that the people in the vehicle were under zero danger at the time that they drove in front of the guy and started a confrontation.

 

Kid was probably 150 dripping wet and these two probably were a combined 400-500 pounds.

 

They would have actually lynched him.

Seriously, how has Travis McMichael not been arrested, no matter who he is? What does "trying to make a citizen's arrest"' have to do with it? This was not self-defense, especially in those circumstances, when Arbery was not actually in a house, burglarizing it?

That accompanying story was awfully light on Arbery's family's reaction, and just the way it's written could make you wonder if they might have known that Arbery actually may have been involved in recent break-ins. Just saying. It's a facet of quickly posted video and not enough reporting, probably, but also a definite consequence of today's often terrible media methods.

 

I know nothing of Arbery's history, certainly not whether he had actually been breaking into houses. Thing is that if there was proof of that, you call the cops. A guy who works for the prosecutor's office damn well knows how the system works. The events in the video are damning, and those two should be locked up for a long time... but they're white, and he wasn't, so there is no assurance that they will.

 

If there was video of Zimmerman, he would be in a cell right now.

 

Has anyone tried to make a citizens’ arrest of these two good ol’ boys? I’m sure they’d be very cooperative.

 

It is very possible that he was up to no good (or not). But he was posing no threat.

 

Believe it or not, in the first couple of seasons of The Andy Griffith Show, African-Americans are fairly frequently shown in Mayberry street scenes, and not in subservient roles -- apparently just as normal citizens.
Unfortunately none ever appear in storylines, except as background scenery, until the very late seasons.

 

The only confusing thing with the video is that it pans away -- as these things always seem to do -- at a crucial moment when Arbery is approaching the truck. So one minute he's running toward the truck, and the next thing you see he's wrestling with the guy with the shotgun. That's a critical few seconds, and leads to some important questions. Was this the first confrontation between the two in this incident? If it wasn't, then why didn't Arbery turn around and go the other way or try to avoid them? What happened in those few seconds to spark the physical confrontation? How (and why) did Arbery go from having guns pulled on him by two men to hand-to-hand combat with one of them in a matter of one or two seconds? Was something said that made him immediately realize fighting for his life his only chance at survival? Could it be argued by the prosecution that he, in fact, was the one standing his ground?

From the CNN story I read, though, it seems pretty clear-cut that they were out hunting for him and then shot him when they should have called the police if they thought he was a suspicious person. That part doesn't seem to be in dispute. They're arguing the semantics of a law, not the facts of the case.
At worst, it appears to be a racially-fueled murder. At best it's a case of attempted vigilante justice gone horribly wrong, when a confrontation could have and should have been avoided entirely. Either way, the argument should be what degree of murder to charge these guys with, and not whether to let them walk free or not. How they aren't in jail is dumbfounding.

 

None of that matters unless Arbery was coming at them with a drawn weapon.

 

What if he “looked like a demon” and “He was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting him?”

That was good enough for Darren Wilson.