A police officer testified Thursday that he told a white father and son on trial for hate crimes in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery there was no evidence the 25-year-old Black man had stolen anything after security cameras recorded him wandering inside a home under construction several times.
“Nothing has been taken and the only crime we had was trespassing,” said Glynn County police Officer Robert Rash, who took the witness stand on the fourth day of the trial in U.S. District Court in the Georgia port city of Brunswick.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, were convicted in state court of murdering Arbery and sentenced to life in prison. Now they’re standing trial again in a separate case brought by federal prosecutors, who charged them with violating Arbery’s civil rights and targeting him because he was Black.
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