Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Attorneys made a final push Monday to persuade the jury in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, with the prosecution saying that three white men chased him solely “because he was a Black man running down the street” and defense attorneys repeatedly blaming Arbery for his own death.
In closing arguments, a defense attorney for the man who fired the fatal gunshots said the 25-year-old Arbery was killed as he violently resisted a legal effort to detain him to answer questions about burglaries in a neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick, Georgia.
“It is absolutely, horrifically tragic that this has happened,” attorney Jason Sheffield said. “This is where the law is intertwined with heartache and tragedy. You are allowed to defend yourself.”
The attorneys made their appeals to the disproportionately white jury after 10 days of testimony that concluded last week. Closing arguments were to resume Tuesday. Prosecutors will get the final word because they carry the burden of proving their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Arbery's killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice after a graphic video of his death leaked online two months later. Though prosecutors did not argue that racism motivated the killing, federal authorities have charged all three men with hate crimes, alleging that they chased and killed Arbery because he was Black.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael grabbed guns and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck after spotting him running through their subdivision on Feb. 23, 2020. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase and recorded the video of Travis McMichael opening fire as Arbery threw punches and grabbed for his shotgun.
No one was charged in the killing until Bryan's video leaked and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. All three men are charged with murder and other offenses.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told the jury the defendants had no evidence Arbery committed crimes but instead acted on assumptions based on neighborhood gossip and speculative social media posts.
“They made the decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways because he was a Black man running down the street,” Dunikoski said. She added: “They shot and killed him. Not because he was a threat to them but because he wouldn't stop and talk to them.”
Defense attorneys say the men suspected Arbery had burglarized a house under construction and intended to hold him until police arrived. Security cameras recorded Arbery inside the house five times, but none of the videos showed him stealing or damaging anything.
Dunikoski said the McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery for five minutes, using their trucks to cut him off, run him off the road and otherwise prevent him from fleeing. She repeated Greg Michael's words to local police after the shooting that Arbery was “trapped like a rat.”
Bryan recorded Travis McMichael standing with a shotgun outside the driver's side door of his idling truck when Arbery approched on foot, then ran around the passenger side. They met in front of the truck, which blocked the camera's view, when Travis McMichael fired the first of three shotgun blasts. The video shows Arbery punching him and grabbing for the gun as two more shots are fired, then Arbery turns to try to run again before falling facedown in the street.
“He chose to fight,” said Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael. She said Arbery decided “without any sense of reason to run at a man wielding a shotgun, leaving him with no other alternative but to be placed in a position to kill him.”
Referring to a smiling photo of Arbery the jury had been show at the trial, Hogue told panel: “A beautiful teenager with a broad smile in a crooked baseball cap can go astray ... And years later he can end up creeping into a home that's not his own, and run away instead of facing the consequences.”
Bryan's attorney, Kevin Gough, suggested Arbery should have cried for help if he was being chased unjustly.
“Why isn't he calling out, `Hey, somebody call 911! There's crazy people after me,”' Gough said. “Maybe that's because Mr. Arbery doesn't want help.”
Gough said Bryan did not know the McMichaels' had guns until moments before the shooting. He suggested a higher power guided Bryan to join the pursuit so he could record the shooting on his phone.
“You you can call it karma. You can call it fate. I would call it divine providence,” Gough said. “Somebody is guiding Mr. Bryan, whether it's a conscious thought process or not. Something is guiding Mr. Bryan down this street to document what's going on.”
Sheffield, who represents Travis McMichael, said his client never wanted to shoot Arbery but was forced to make a life-or-death decision when Arbery charged at him in front of the truck.
He said residents of Satilla Shores were already nervous amid reports of thefts and suspicious people in the neighborhood. He said Arbery's frequent visits to the unfinished home made it reasonable to suspect he had stolen items from a boat the home's owner kept in the doorless garage a short time before he installed the cameras.
Dunikoski noted that Arbery never threatened the McMichaels during the chase, and he carried no weapons.
“You can't bring a gun to a fistfight. It's unfair, right?” the prosecutor said.
She said it was Travis McMichael who attacked Arbery - first with his truck, then by pointing a shotgun at him as Arbery ran toward him.
“They can't claim self-defense under the law because they were the initial, unjustified aggressors,” Dunikoski said, “and they started this.”
Arbery had enrolled at a technical college and was preparing to study to become an electrician like his uncles when he was killed.
This story corrects the prosecutor's quote to say Arbery was killed "running down the street," not "their street."
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.