The former district attorney who was investigating the ambush killing of Georgia jogger Ahmaud Arbery in the spring of 2020 has now been arrested.
On Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021, Jackie Johnson turned herself into the Glyn County Detention Center in Brunswick, Georgia, a four-hour drive southeast of Atlanta. She has been being indicted “on counts of obstruction and violations of oath by a public officer,” according to CBS 46.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr accuses Johnson of using “her position to delay arrests of the White men who chased and killed the 25-year-old Arbery.”
The young man was jogging on a predominantly White side of town on Feb. 23, 2020, when three men chased down Arbery and tried to interrogate him about why he was there. Arbery had previously paused at a vacant house to peek in, something that other joggers had done previously.
Once the men stopped Arbery, a struggle ensued as he tried to free himself from Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael while their neighbor William Bryan filmed the scene from his vehicle. That is when Arbery was shot and killed on the scene.
Arbery was one of three high-profile killings of unarmed Black men and women in the first half of 2020 — which includes Louisville’s Breanna Taylor and George Floyd in Minneapolis — that eventually incited worldwide protests and calls for major police reform.
Despite the fact that there was video evidence of Arbery’s killing, no one was arrested nor indicted months later, leading to speculation of prosecutorial misconduct by Johnson’s office.
All three suspects have been charged with murder and have been remanded to jail until the trial. All three have pled not guilty.
