BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The man who chased down and fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery sent messages to friends with “a theme of Black people being less than human,” a federal prosecutor told jurors Monday.
Travis McMichael, on trial with his father and a neighbor who shot the cellphone video of the shooting, referred to Black people as “animals, criminals, monkeys, subhumans, savages,” prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein said during opening statements of the hate crimes trial.
On Feb. 23, 2020, McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and co-defendant William “Roddie” Bryan joined in a chase of Arbery “based on the color of his skin,” said Bernstein, from the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
