A father and son who murdered Black man Ahmaud Arbery in 2020 have been sentenced to life in prison in the US.
Greg McMichael, right, and his son, Travis McMichael, left, enter the courtroom for the reading of the jury's verdict in the Glynn County Courthouse, in Brunswick, Georgia, USA on 24 November, 2021.A judge sentenced a white father and son to life in prison and their neighbour to 35 years on Monday for a federal hate crime in the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man shot after jogging in a suburban Georgia neighborhood in a case exemplifying racist violence and vigilantism in America.
"You acted because of the colour of Mr Arbery's skin," the judge told McMichael, who looked ashen as the sentence was pronounced. He apologised to his son, who declined his own chance to testify, and to his wife, who began sobbing, but did not explicitly apologise to Mr Arbery's family. "I struggled to come to the realisation that a father could actually accompany his son to take a life," Wanda Cooper Jones, Arbery's mother, told the second hearing in urging a life sentence for Gregory McMichael.
Their neighbour Bryan joined the chase in his own pickup truck and pulled out his cellphone to record Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at Mr Arbery at close range. Mr Arbery had nothing on him besides his running clothes and sneakers.