Travis McMichael attempts to explain killing of Ahmaud Arbery in new bodycam video

'I just shot a man… last thing I've ever wanted to do in my life,' said McMichael in the footage.

Dec 17, 2020

Shocking bodycam footage of the man accused of shooting Ahmaud Arbery has recently surfaced.

Travis McMichael, the accused shooter, is seen on video speaking with a female police officer explaining the events that led up to the shooting. In the clip, he can be heard justifying his actions by telling the officer he had no choice but to shoot Arbery.

“We ran out to stop him, to talk to him… he stopped me coming out of the truck, running at us,” McMichael confessed in the video posted by Daily Mail. “I told him to stop, stop, stop till he hit me, I had nothing to do, there’s nothing else I could do.”

In the video, McMichael is seen pacing back and forth with blood on his arm as a female officer tries to console him.

McMichael allegedly shot Arbery back in February in Glynn County, Atlanta, because he assumed Arbery could be the burglar behind the neighborhood’s recent break-ins. However, Arbery was just out for his daily jog.

“I just shot a man… last thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my life,” said McMichael in the footage.

The video includes McMichael’s father reassuring his son by telling him: “it’s going to be OK” and “you had no choice.”

In this image made from video, from left, father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, accused in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia on Feb. 2020. (AP Photo/Lewis Levine)

Gregory McMichael, a retired investigator, told police his son was attacked and “was trying to take the shotgun away from him.” He added, “To be perfectly honest with you if I could’ve got a shot at the guy, I’d have shot him myself.”

Both Travis and Gregory are being held on bond along with their neighbor William Roderick Bryan, who filmed the shooting. All three men are facing murder charges.

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