Fox News contributor and former Washington, D.C. homicide detective Ted Williams said Wednesday on “Your World” that the man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, Travis McMichael’s testimony exposed him as a vigilante who murdered “a young black kid jogging through a neighborhood.”
Reacting to McMichael testifying he was acting in self-defense, Williams said, “This was a young man running through a neighborhood, had looked into a vacant house on several occasions. At no time had they been able to show that this young man stole or took anything. He’s running through the neighborhood. All of a sudden, there’s a truck with two men in it chasing after him. They catch up with him. They start questioning him. He moves away. He doesn’t even talk to them. He runs away from them. They go after him. They chase after him. He gets into a confrontation with Travis McMichael over the gun. Travis McMichael wants to now holler self-defense.”
He continued, “Well, let me just say this to you. If you are the aggressor or if you are found to be an aggressor, you cannot then hide behind self-defense. And this case, everything, everything that I’ve heard tells me that the McMichaels and Roddy Bryant, who was also involved in this, were the aggressors. This man, Neil, this is such a tragedy. He was just running down the street. Didn’t have any stolen goods in his hands, didn’t have anything he was doing that they could show that he had committed any kind of a crime. And this man was killed.”
Williams added, “Even if you suspected him of doing something, how dare you! Who in the hell are you to go and try to make a citizens’ arrest of a young Black kid just running down the street?”
When asked about Arbery entering unoccupied homes, Williams said, “That was not even reasonable suspicion. That wasn’t reasonable justification for these men to take the law in their own hands, to act as though they were vigilantes, to act as though are that they had the right to arrest this man. Because they couldn’t arrest him for anything even if law enforcement would have come on that scene, there would have been no reason to arrest this man.”
Williams added, “This is what we’ve seen here and heard this afternoon. We’ve heard a murder, Neil, a murder of a young black kid jogging through a neighborhood.”
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