The evidence was "more than enough" to charge two white men for the murder of a young black jogger, US state police said on Friday, without explaining why it took 74 days to arrest them.
"Is it illegal to be black?"
Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, were taken into custody Thursday night for the murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, killed on February 23 in Brunswick, in the southern United States segregationist. The affair caused a lot of excitement in a country regularly shaken by racial violence.
Hundreds of demonstrators, their faces covered in masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus, gathered in the city court to demand justice. "Is it illegal to be black and jog?" Read one of the signs held up in the crowd. Because of the pandemic, the mobilization moved on social networks, where Internet users multiplied the messages under photos in sportswear with the hashtag #IRunWithMaud ("I run with Maud" - the nickname of the young man) .
Investigations focused on the murder
At a press conference, the Georgia police chief, whose services were seized on Tuesday evening after the broadcast of a video of the crime, estimated that the elements to charge the two suspects were "more than enough". In 36 hours, his teams made the arrests, said Vic Reynolds: "It says it all."
The investigation is not over and further arrests are possible, he added. The man who filmed the scene is of particular interest to investigators. But the investigations will focus on the murder only, Vic Reynolds assured, excluding from being interested in the reasons why the local police and the prosecutors did not act more quickly.