Video footage from the Brunswick, Georgia, neighbourhood where Ahmaud Arbery was killed in February shows that several people trespassed on the construction site that Mr Arbery visited prior to his death.
Mr Arbery was killed when Gregory McMichael and his adult son Travis – a pair of white men who live in the neighbourhood – chased him down under the pretence that he looked like a suspect in a series of local break-ins. Later, it would be revealed that it had been seven weeks since the last break-ins.
During the confrontation, Travis McMichael and Mr Arbery began to struggle. Travis McMichael shot Mr Arbery three times with a shotgun, twice in the chest while at close range.
After footage of the murder was released to the press, the McMichaels were arrested and are awaiting trial. Shortly after their arrest, footage of Mr Arbery entering and looking around the site of a new construction project emerged, which prompted defenders of the McMichaels to suggest Mr Arbery’s killing was justified.
“The truth will reveal that this is not just another act of violent racism. Greg McMichael did not commit murder,” said Frank Hogue, the McMichaels’ attorney.
Additional footage released by the homeowner, Larry English, shows that other people had trespassed on the construction site, but Mr Arbery is the only one who was killed as a result.
CNN obtained 11 clips of surveillance videos which showed people of varying ages entering the property on separate occasions between 25 October and 23 February.
The homeowner said he did not know any of the people in the video clips.
“We do not know who any of the individuals in the nighttime videos are and never have,” J Elizabeth Graddy, Mr English’s attorney, said. “The reason that Larry English sent the video to his neighbour ... in the first place was to ask ‘Do you know any of these people’?”
Of the individuals caught on the security camera, there are several instances of an unidentified black male approaching and entering the site. Mr Arbery appeared in one clip. The lawyer for Mr Arbery’s family, S Lee Merritt, told CNN he would not ask the family to confirm or deny whether the man in the other clips was Mr Arbery.
