Donald Trump apologist Candace Owens seems to have been chomping at the bit to apply her usual “naïveté” to the case of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man shot and killed while jogging in coastal Georgia. Surveillance video showing Arbery walking into a home under construction and walking back out apparently was just the groundbreaking evidence she needed to smear him and prop up two white men accused of killing him.
Arbery, 25, was killed Feb. 23, 2020 near the home under construction in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick, according to Georgia authorities. Although there’s been little to no evidence proving Arbery committed a break-in, the theory’s been floated online by Owens and other conservatives grasping at straws as a possible justification for the encounter leading to the shooting.
Recently allowed back on Twitter following a temporary ban for encouraging Michigan residents to defy a shelter-in-place order, Owens wouldn’t dare use the social media platform to blame the actual men charged in Arbery’s death: former Georgia cop Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael. She also didn’t bother to push for an investigation into how the Arbery case, which is on its fourth prosecutor, has been handled.
Instead, Owens tweeted Saturday: “Ahmaud Arbery was caught on camera breaking into an unfinished property that was owned by Larry English. His mother has confirmed it is him in the video. Please stop with the ‘just a jogger’ bullshit narrative. Avid joggers don’t wear khaki shorts & stop to break into homes.”
By the homeowner’s account, neither did Arbery. Elizabeth Graddy, English’s attorney, told ABC News although English had called the police’s nonemergency line in October to report that someone had been coming onto his property, he didn’t characterize it as a burglary or robbery. Nothing was ever taken, Graddy said. “Even if something had been though, I will say, Mr. English has been very clear that he would never have wanted anything like this to happen,” Graddy said. She added that her client doesn’t even know the McMichaels. “He would never want deadly force used to protect property,” Graddy said. “He’s been very clear about that.”
Graddy also told ABC News the surveillance video of her client’s home couldn't have been the justification for anything the McMichaels did “because no one even saw this video until after Mr. Arbery was dead ...” She said that includes her client, who didn’t think the man shown in the surveillance footage looked like Arbery. “He did not even know it was the same person until the Arberys said that they believed it was their son in the house that day based on the video,” Graddy said.
Attorney Lee Merritt, who’s representing Arbery’s family, has said he believes Arbery was targeted because he is a Black man. “#AhmaudArbery was murdered by 3 white men that saw him running & decided to impute criminality on him,” Merritt tweeted, also pushing for the arrest of the man who videotaped the shooting. In the tweet, Merritt said Arbery did nothing wrong. “Still he was stalked, threatened & shot 3x at close range,” the attorney said. “This was not only murder it was a lynching."
Owens apparently disagrees. “Black America needs to get real and stop believing there is always a race narrative that underlines everything,” she tweeted Monday. “Neighbors recognized him. They called the cops and then two people fatefully attempted to take the law into their own hands. That is all.”
Even after deleting a tweet describing Arbery as a burglar, the closest Owens came in her Twitter advocacy to acknowledging any wrongdoing by the men actually charged with killing Arbery was a suggestion that he “didn’t deserve to die.” How empathetic of her.
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