‘I DON’T KNOW’

‘Instinct’ Made Me Think Arbery Did Something Wrong, Suspect Said After Shooting

“I figured he shot somebody,” William Bryan told investigators after Ahmaud Arbery’s Feb. 2020 death.

Two months after Ahmaud Arbery was chased and killed while on a run, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent-in-charge Jason Seacrist was tasked with interviewing William Bryan, the man who captured the incident on camera. But when Seacrist asked what made him believe Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man, had done something to prompt Bryan and his neighbors to chase after him, Bryan simply answered: “It was just instinct man, I don’t know.”

“I figured he stole something. I didn’t know if he’d shot somebody. I didn’t know what was up,” Bryan told Seacrist, according to transcripts of their interview the agent read aloud in court on Friday. Bryan later told Seacrist that he had not heard shots prior to joining Gregory and Travis McMichael’s chase of Arbery—nor did Arbery threaten or speak to him during the encounter. The trio’s defense team alleges that the McMichaels believed Arbery was responsible for several break-ins in the area and pursued him to make a citizen’s arrest.

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Pilar MelendezSenior National Reporter

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