On the second day of testimony at the trial of three white men accused of gunning down 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, a former Glynn County officer gave an emotional statement on the victim’s last moments after he had been shot.
“I heard two loud pop sounds,” Officer Ricky Minsew said. “I heard agonal breathing, like a death rattle.”
Greg McMichael, 67, his son Travis McMichael, ad their neighbor William Bryan, 52, are accused of fatally shooting Arbery on February 23, 2020, after spotting him running and assuming he was a burglar.
“He appeared to be unresponsive to his surroundings,” Minsew added. “He had bled out to the point that the blood was exceeding the perimeter of his body.”
Minshew’s bodycam footage of the agonizing Black victim laying in a pool of his blood next to a 12-gauge shotgun was also displayed.
In her opening statements, Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told jurors that the avid jogger Arbery was chased by the three men and put down based on their prejudiced assumptions he was a criminal.
“They assumed that he must have committed some crime that day. He tried to run around their truck and get away from these strangers, total strangers, who had already told him that they would kill him. And then they killed him.”
