After Arbery killing, 16 calls between DA, shooter's dad

In this May 2020 photo, a recently painted mural of Ahmaud Arbery is on display in Brunswick, Ga., where the 25-year-old man was shot and killed in February. The white men convicted of hate crimes for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery as he ran in their Georgia neighborhood have been scheduled for sentencing this summer in federal court. (AP Photo/Sarah Blake Morgan)

One of the men convicted of murder in the street chase and fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery spoke with his former boss, the local district attorney, several times by phone in the days and weeks following the 2020 killing, according to a court document filed Thursday.

Investigators found that the day after the shooting, then-Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson placed a phone call to Greg McMichael, a retired investigator for her office who initiated the pursuit that ended in Arbery’s death. The call lasted more than nine minutes, prosecutors in a misconduct case against Johnson said in the legal filing.

The document listed 16 calls between phone numbers for Johnson and McMichael starting Feb. 23, 2020, when McMichael left Johnson a voicemail about an hour after the shooting, and ending May 5, 2020, the day graphic cellphone video of Arbery’s killing leaked online. The video sparked a national outcry over the young Black man’s death at the hands of three white pursuers.