Update: on May 8, 2020, George and Travis McMichael were arrested and charged with felony murder and aggravated assault.
The video is clear. It is disorienting in its clarity. And you wonder, for a moment, if this is a found-footage film, something like a cross between Get Out and The Blair Witch Project. But it is real. That is the disorienting part. It is real. It would not be real to us unless we saw it; the truth would be obfuscated if not for the footage.
Watching it, even thinking about it now, I feel sick. Fear sick, with my heart palpitating. I want to outrun it, the trembling, the bile rising. When I first learned of what they did, anger enveloped my brain. It happens every time I first learn of what they do. An anger like smoke concealing and signaling the scope of a wildfire.
And then it dissipates. It burns off to reveal what remains after such a fire. Cold knowledge. Absolute certainty.
They hunted Ahmaud Arbery down and killed him.
They hunted Ahmaud Arbery as though he were a deer and shot him like was less than a deer.
They ran Ahmaud Arbery down and blasted a shotgun at his chest.
They filmed the killing of Ahmaud Arbery with the intention to use as evidence that would necessitate the use of vigilante murder.
