ATLANTA — As he chased an armed and fleeing Ahmaud Arbery, a Glynn County schools police officer testified Wednesday he had one prevailing thought.
"Lord, please don't make me have to shoot this man," said Rodney Ellis, chief of police for Glynn schools. Ellis was called by the defense in support of its bid to admit testimony about 10 incidents of "prior bad acts" committed by Arbery. Two involve incidents that led him to plead guilty to felony charges. Others involve confrontations he allegedly had with law enforcement.
On this night in 2013, Ellis testified Arbery brought a gun to a high school basketball game. He eventually was handcuffed at gunpoint after running away from officers on two occasions, Ellis said.
The state objected to the testimony, arguing it's irrelevant and serves only to smear the victim. It also helps obscure a lingering contradiction in the defense's case, lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said.
"You can't claim self-defense when you started it," said Dunikoski, who supplanted Jesse Evans in the lead chair after Evans resigned from the Cobb County District Attorney's Office, which was assigned the case by the state.
On Feb. 23, 2020, Greg McMichael told police he saw Arbery running down the street in front of his house. McMichael called inside to his son Travis McMichael and the two men jumped into a pickup truck in pursuit of Arbery. William "Roddie" Bryan, who lived nearby, joined in the chase and at one point tried to block Arbery with his pickup.
After a chase through the Satilla Shores neighborhood, where the defendants lived, Arbery was cornered. Travis McMichael got out of his truck with his Remington shotgun trained on Arbery. In what the state called a "fight or flight" response, Arbery lunged at Travis McMichael, who then fired three shots, killing Arbery, who was not armed.
The McMichaels, who are white, told police they believed Arbery, a Black man, was responsible for a string of break-ins in their neighborhood and were making a citizen's arrest, since outlawed by the Georgia General Assembly.
Defense co-counsel Jason Sheffield said that introducing the testimony about past acts, and the response to them, allows jurors to see "what was going on with Ahmaud Arbery that day."
The hearing is expected to last two days. For the first time, the McMichaels and Bryan appeared in court. The three are being held without bond at the Glynn County jail.
