Leid Stories--The Summary Execution of Ahmaud Arbery--05.11.20

He would have celebrated his 26th birthday over the weekend. Instead, thousands turned out all over the country--and particularly in his home state of Georgia--to mark his death day, Feb. 23, vowing that his white vigilante killers will be brought to justice.

Arbery was shot and killed by a father-and-son team who justified killing Arbery, saying he looked like someone who had been burglarizing homes in the neighborhood. When they ordered him to stop so they could question him, he ran away from them, they told police.

Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, said her former high school footballer son would jog around the neighborhood to keep fit. He was jogging when the two armed men, riding in a white pickup truck, crossed his path.

A video shows the armed men confronting Arbery, and Arbery trying to get away from them. Three shots were fired at close range, the video showed, and Arbery fell to the ground, fatally wounded.

Not until mass mobilization by the community and the involvement of several high-profile lawyers and civil-rights activists did state and federal law-enforcement authorities move on the case. Will there be justice--indictment, trial, conviction and prison--for Ahmaud's killers?