The Justice Department is officially investigating Ahmaud Arbery's killing as a hate
crime, his family's lawyer said on Monday.
Arbery was shot dead by Travis McMichael on February 23 while out running after he was seen entering a construction site.
Arbery's mother now says he was an aspiring electrician and she thinks he was observing the wiring in the property.
Travis and his father, retired cop Gregory McMichael, chased Arbery in their truck after he entered the property.
William Roddie Bryan Jr., their neighbor, filmed the shooting and he has now also been charged with murder.
Bryan Jr. insists he was just a witness and not an accomplice.
Arbery's family have always contested that he was the victim of a racist hate crime.
While the Justice Department does not confirm details of ongoing investigations, the Arberys' family lawyer said they had been informed his death was now being formally investigated as a hate crime, according to
PBS.
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Surveillance footage taken on a construction site less than an hour before he was shot dead also shows Ahmaud walking out empty-handed.
He had prior convictions for shoplifting but none for burglary.
Less than two weeks before Arbery was killed, 34-year-old Travis McMichael had called 911 to report a possible trespasser inside a house under construction in the subdivision, describing him as 'a black male, red shirt and white shorts' and saying he feared the person was armed.
The Arbery family’s attorneys have confirmed that Ahmaud was captured on security cameras entering that home on the day he was killed.
The property owner said nothing appeared to have been stolen, however, and surveillance footage also shows other people coming in and out of the construction site on other days, some apparently to access a water source on the property.
His mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, thinks her son was at the construction site to observe the wiring.
'I think that when he went into the property, he probably was looking to see how they were going to run the wire … or how he would do the job if it was one of his assignments,' she said, referring to his plan to become an electrician.
It took three months for any arrests to be made and the case bounced between three prosecutors.
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Arbery had plans in place to turn the page on his life and overcome his criminal past.
Arbery had enrolled at South Georgia Technical College, preparing to become an electrician, just like his uncles.
Before Arbery’s name joined a litany of hashtags bearing young black men’s names, he was a skinny kid whose dreams of an NFL career didn’t pan out.
Those who knew him speak of a seemingly bottomless reservoir of kindness he used to encourage others, of an easy smile and infectious laughter that could lighten just about any situation.
They also acknowledge the legal troubles that cropped up after high school - five years of probation for carrying a gun onto the high school campus in 2013, a year after graduation, and shoplifting from a Walmart store in 2017, a charge that extended that probation up until the time of his death.
In his final months on Earth, Arbery appeared to be someone who felt on the verge of personal and professional breakthroughs, especially because his probation could have ended this year, many of those close to him told The Associated Press.
At the time of his death, Arbery was on a sabbatical. College could wait until the fall.
To help keep his head clear, he ran, just about every day through his Satilla Shores neighborhood.
Cooper-Jones accepted that he was a young adult living at home, like so many of his contemporaries, taking a breather to chart how he’d one day support himself.
She had one rule: 'If you have the energy to run the roads, you need to be on the job.'
So he worked at his father’s car wash and landscaping business, and previously had held a job at McDonald’s.
Born May 8, 1994, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery was the youngest of three children, answering to the affectionate nicknames 'Maud' and 'Quez.'
As a teenager, he stuck to the family home so markedly that his family worried he never wanted to go out with friends.
'And I was like, he’ll get to the stage eventually,' Cooper-Jones said.
’He was a mama’s boy at first.'
