As police arrived in the minutes after Ahmaud Arbery was shot in coastal Georgia, the man who shot him appeared visibly upset in newly released police body camera footage.
Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested on murder charges in May, more than two months after the 25-year-old Black man was fatally shot while running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. They've been jailed without bond since then.
“Last thing I ever wanted to do in my life,” a blood-spattered Travis McMichael tells an officer, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If he had stopped, this wouldn't have happened.”
The video shows officers working to try to save Arbery as he lies on the ground soaked in blood.
Cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times at close range with a shotgun further fueled a national outcry over racial injustice. Gregory McMichael told police after the shooting that he and his son pursued Arbery because they suspected him of being a burglar. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., shot the cellphone video and is also in jail, charged with murder for joining the chase.
“(Travis) had had no choice, man,” Greg McMichael tells officers in the body camera footage. Retired from a job as an investigator with the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney's office, it's clear in the video that he knew many of the officers, the newspaper reported.
As he's questioned by an officer, Bryan can be heard saying, “Should we have been chasing him? I don't know.”
Greg McMichael said Arbery was frequently in the neighborhood “breaking into places." He also told officers, “To be honest with you, if I could've shot the guy, I would've shot him myself.”
Authorities have said there’s no evidence Arbery stole from a home under construction near the McMichaels' house or that he committed any other crimes.
