The DOJ announced today that it is considering whether to pursue hate crime charges against the killers of Ahmaud Arbery, which happened in February of this year:
FOX NEWS – The Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering whether to pursue federal hate crime charges in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the black man investigators say was shot by a white father and son as he ran through a Georgia neighborhood.
“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia have been supporting and will continue to fully support and participate in the state investigation,” a statement from DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Monday.
Kupec continued: “We are assessing all of the evidence to determine whether federal hate crimes charges are appropriate. In addition, we are considering the request of the Attorney General of Georgia and have asked that he forward to federal authorities any information that he has about the handling of the investigation. We will continue to assess all information, and we will take any appropriate action that is warranted by the facts and the law.”
The DOJ statement comes a day after Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the DOJ to conduct an investigation into how the case was handled by Georgia law enforcement. The case has seen two prosecutors replaced after potential conflicts of interest arose and it took more than two months after the fatal shooting for law enforcement to arrest the father and son.
“We are committed to a complete and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case was handled from the outset,” Carr said in a statement. “The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers, and we will work with others in law enforcement at the state and federal level to find those answers.”
Video came out last week showing Arbery jogging along a road with a pickup truck stopped in his way. Two men, a father and son duo, had apparently stopped the truck because they thought he looked like a robbery suspect. They ordered him to stop while hold a shotgun and Arbery fought them. The son shot Arbery twice with the shotgun, killing him:
I don’t know whether this is hate crime case or just a couple of fools mistakenly taking the law into their own hands. Either way, it appears that Arbery was defending himself and these thugs took his life when they had no business stopping him at all, especially at gunpoint.
Of course I’ll note the caveat that the video isn’t the greatest and, should more video come out saying otherwise, we’ll let you know. But I can’t imagine how this one turns out any different than it already appears.