Yesterday, CNN correspondent Martin Savidge was filming a report in the Brunswick, Ga., neighborhood where a 25-year-old African-American man had been brutally gunned down on Feb. 23. When the Atlanta-based correspondent and his crew arrived in the neighborhood to ask residents for their thoughts about what happened that day, he was greeted with what sounded like gunfire from a semi-automatic weapon.
Savidge told CNN New Day’s John Berman and later HLN’s Robin Meade he believed the shots were a message aimed “directly” at the CNN news crew, “telling us that we weren’t wanted in that community.”
WATCH:
Unbelievable video of warning gunshots of a @CNN crew getting video of the same neighborhood that #AhmaudArbery was shot & killed while exercising in a white neighborhood in Brunswick GA. Thank God that @MartinSavidge and crew are ok.#JusticeForAhmaudArbery pic.twitter.com/oSfDM7RZ4x
— Thomas D Bradley (@ThomasDBradley) May 6, 2020
On that Sunday afternoon in February, Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, both white men, fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, who was reportedly jogging at the time.
The elder McMichael told officers that he recognized Arbery from recent burglaries in the neighborhood. The report says the father-son duo grabbed a shotgun and a pistol and got into their white truck to go after Arbery. Once they caught up to him, the report says “Travis exited the truck with a shotgun” and Arbery began “violently attacking him” before he was shot.
A Georgia prosecutor will bring the killing of Arbery before a grand jury. Any grand jury hearing wouldn’t happen at least until mid-June when Georgia’s courts reopen from Covid-19 restrictions.