The man who recorded a video of an African-American man, Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., has been arrested on suspicion of felony murder.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) disclosed this in a Thursday statement.
Bryan was inside a vehicle behind a pickup that stopped on the road when he recorded the shooting of Arbery by Travis McMichael in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia on February 23.
But Gregory McMichael, Travis’s father, who was inside the pickup during the shooting, later told police that Bryan had tried to help them stop Arbery earlier.
CNN quoted the GBI, which is conducting the investigation into Arbery’s death, as saying that Bryan, 50, was arrested Thursday and will face charges of felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
Like the McMichaels who are being held for murder and aggravated assault, Bryan will be booked into the Glynn County Jail.
The senior McMichael, a former prosecutorial investigator and ex-Glynn County police officer, said he and his son chased Arbery upon suspicion of breaking in into a neighbour’s home that was under construction.
Bryan’s 36-second video shows Arbery trying to run around the McMichaels’ pickup before turning sharply toward Travis McMichael and struggling over his shotgun. Arbery was shot three times and collapsed in the street.
But the victim’s family said he was jogging around the neighbourhood.
The family’s attorneys said they had called for Bryan’s arrest, adding that his involvement in the murder was “obvious”.
However, Kevin Gough, Bryan’s lawyer, stated on Monday that his client was unarmed at the time of the shooting and had taken a polygraph test that showed he was not involved in the shooting.
He added that his client took the test voluntarily and it further proved that his client did not have any conversation with the McMichaels before the fatal incident.