What Ahmaud Arbery's mom would tell the 3 men convicted of murdering her son

'Nowhere to Run: The Ahmaud Arbery Story' is streaming now on Hulu.

ByMorgan Winsor ABCNews logo
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Ahmaud Arbery's mother speaks out after murder trial verdict
Wanda Cooper-Jones spoke about the family's reaction to the verdict and what's next.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- It's been nearly two years since the 25-year-old Black man was gunned down while jogging in a mostly white southern Georgia neighborhood.

"We know that Ahmaud was targeted because he was a Black runner in a community that thought that his presence there was inappropriate," Cooper-Jones' attorney, Lee Merritt, said during the interview on "GMA."

Merritt noted how prosecutors made a decision not to center their case on race but rather on the "criminal nature."

"Nowhere to Run: The Ahmaud Arbery Story" is streaming now on Hulu.

"What I appreciated about the prosecution's strategy was that they said Ahmaud Arbery was a citizen in the United States running on a free road, and that alone entitled him to life." he said. "Not by virtue of any, you know, protected class that he belongs to. But we all enjoy these rights as citizens of the United States of America."

On Wednesday, Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery in February 2020, was convicted by a Glynn County jury on all nine charges, including malice murder and four counts of felony murder.

His father, Gregory McMichael, was found not guilty of malice murder but was convicted on all other charges, including four counts of felony murder.

MORE: All 3 men charged in Ahmaud Arbery's death convicted of murder

All three men charged in the death of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted of murder Wednesday. The jury reached its decision after more than 10 hours of deliberations.

Their neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, who recorded the incident on a cellphone, was found guilty on six charges, including three of the felony murder counts.

All three men face up to life in prison.

The 12-member jury, comprised of 11 white people and one Black person, announced the verdict after more than 11 hours of deliberations, spanning two days. Cooper-Jones, sitting in the courtroom, wept in relief.

"There's just really no words to really explain all the emotions that I was going through at that time," she said.

Although relieved, Cooper-Jones said she wasn't that surprised by the verdict.

"I sat there everyday, I heard the state present their evidence. I was very, very confident that they did a very good job of presenting their evidence," she explained, "and I knew that if the jurors took that evidence, went back and deliberated over the evidence that was presented, that we would get justice for Ahmaud -- and we did."

When asked whether she had a message for the three defendants, Cooper-Jones replied: "I would simply tell them that their bad decisions have impacted two families -- my family and again their family."

"Not only did the McMichaels lose a son, they lost a grandfather and they will be impacted by his grandchild," she said. "I lost a son, but they lost three generations there."

ABC News' Kelly McCarthy contributed to this report.

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