A Timeline of the Ahmaud Arbery Shooting Case

Ahmaud Arbery loved to run. A former high school football standout, he had been jogging near his home on the outskirts of Brunswick, Ga., when he was shot and killed after being pursued by two white men with guns, according to the authorities.

The men, Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 64, were charged in May 2020 with murder and aggravated assault — two days after a graphic video of the shooting of Mr. Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, became public, and more than two months after the killing itself. A neighbor who filmed the attack was also charged.

The case has generated a wave of outrage and raised concerns about persistent racial inequities in the justice system.

Here is a timeline of the events leading up to the arrests and a trial that ended with murder convictions in November 2021.

Feb. 23, 2020

Ahmaud Arbery is shot dead.

Mr. Arbery was killed shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 23, in Satilla Shores, a suburban neighborhood about 15 minutes from downtown Brunswick.

The authorities said he was shot after an encounter with Gregory and Travis McMichael, who had grabbed two guns and followed Mr. Arbery in a truck after he jogged past them.

Gregory McMichael told the police that he thought Mr. Arbery looked like a man suspected in several break-ins in the area. The Brunswick News, citing documents obtained through a public records request, reported that there had been just one burglary in the neighborhood since January: the theft of a handgun from an unlocked truck parked outside Travis McMichael’s house.

Feb. 27, 2020

The first prosecutor recuses herself.

The Brunswick District Attorney’s Office and the Glynn County Police Department conducted the initial investigation into the killing.

In late February, the Brunswick district attorney, Jackie L. Johnson, recused herself from the case, pointing out that Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn County police officer, had been a longtime investigator in her office until his retirement.

April 1, 2020

A local newspaper publishes details of the police investigation.

After a public records request, The Brunswick News reported details of the Glynn County Police Department’s records on the shooting. The police report was based almost entirely on the responding officer’s interview with Gregory McMichael. The records claimed that after the McMichaels pursued Mr. Arbery, Travis McMichael and Mr. Arbery “started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot.”

Early April 2020

A second prosecutor finds no reason to charge, then recuses himself.

The case was taken over by George E. Barnhill, the Waycross district attorney, who advised the police that there was insufficient cause to arrest Mr. Arbery’s pursuers. He argued that they had acted legally under Georgia’s citizen arrest and self-defense laws, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

Under pressure from Mr. Arbery’s family, Mr. Barnhill then recused himself from the case because his son had worked in the Brunswick prosecutor’s office with Gregory McMichael. Mr. Barnhill asked the Georgia Attorney General’s Office to help find another district attorney to handle the case.

April 13, 2020

A third prosecutor takes over the case.

On April 13, the case was transferred to a third prosecutor, District Attorney Tom Durden of the Atlantic Judicial Circuit.

April 26, 2020

The Arbery family fears lack of action.

For two months in the spring of 2020, the shooting received little attention outside Brunswick. As the coronavirus pandemic dominated headlines and shut down communities around the country, The Times spoke with Mr. Arbery’s friends and family, who were by then concerned the case might quietly disappear in their Deep South community, because social distancing restrictions had made it difficult for them to gather and protest.

May 5, 2020

The video emerges.

In early May, a graphic video of the fatal encounter had begun to circulate online. It galvanized an already growing chorus of voices calling for charges to be brought in the case.

Recorded from inside a vehicle, it shows Mr. Arbery running along a shaded two-lane residential road when he comes upon a white pickup truck, with a man standing beside its open driver-side door. Another man is in the truck bed. Mr. Arbery runs around the vehicle and disappears briefly from view. Muffled shouting can be heard before Mr. Arbery emerges, tussling with the man outside the truck as three shotgun blasts echo.

That same day, Mr. Durden said that he wanted to send the case to a grand jury to decide whether to bring charges. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that night that it would be taking over the case at Mr. Durden’s request.

The Times later learned that WGIG, the Brunswick radio station that first posted the video, had obtained the footage from a local criminal defense lawyer who had informally consulted with the suspects. The lawyer, Alan Tucker, said in an interview that he had leaked the video to dispel rumors that he said had fueled tension in the community.

“It wasn’t two men with a Confederate flag in the back of a truck going down the road and shooting a jogger in the back,” he said.

May 7, 2020

The McMichaels are arrested.

Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested at home on May 7 and were booked into a jail in Glynn County, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Both men were charged with murder and aggravated assault. It was not clear whether the men had retained legal counsel.

May 8, 2020

Supporters rally on Ahmaud Arbery’s birthday.

Mr. Arbery would have turned 26 on May 8, 2020. The hashtag #IRunWithMaud was shared thousands of times across social media, as supporters documented 2.23-mile runs and walks, to commemorate the date of Mr. Arbery’s killing.

Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, through a spokeswoman, said that he planned to start a review of all of the relevant players in the case.

May 10, 2020

Georgia attorney general seeks Justice Department review.

Mr. Carr, a Republican, urged the Justice Department to initiate a sweeping investigation into the case.

Justice Department officials later said that they were weighing whether to bring federal hate crime charges, and had asked state officials to pass along relevant information as they considered beginning an investigation.

May 11, 2020

A fourth prosecutor takes over the case.

Mr. Carr appointed the fourth prosecutor to handle the case. She is Joyette M. Holmes, the district attorney in Cobb County, a populous Atlanta suburb, where she is the first African-American to hold the office. Mr. Carr also requested that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation investigate possible prosecutorial misconduct by Mr. Barnhill and Ms. Johnson.

May 12, 2020

Autopsy results released.

An autopsy report showed Mr. Arbery was shot twice in the chest and had a third wound on a wrist. He had no drugs or alcohol in his system and the manner of death was homicide, the report said.

May 21, 2020

A third man is charged with murder.

The man who filmed the fatal encounter between Mr. Arbery and the McMichaels was arrested, the authorities said. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that the man, William Bryan, 50, was being charged with felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

March 31, 2021

Georgia’s citizen arrest law gets overhaul.

Lawmakers in Georgia nearly unanimously approved a bill gutting a Civil War-era law that allowed residents to arrest one another. The move, which was inspired by Mr. Arbery’s killing, was championed by critics of such law who said they had historically been used by white citizens to justify the killing of African Americans.

April 28, 2021

The McMichaels and Mr. Bryan are indicted on federal hate crime charges.

The three men were each charged with one count of interference with Mr. Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race. They were also charged with one count of attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels were also charged with one count each of using, carrying and brandishing a firearm.

Sept. 2, 2021

A former prosecutor in the cases faces criminal charges.

Ms. Johnson, who had recused herself from the case, was indicted by a grand jury in Glynn County, Ga., on charges of “violation of oath of public officer” and “obstruction and hindering a law enforcement officer.”

Nov. 24, 2021

A jury finds Mr. Bryan and the McMichaels guilty of murder.

After 10 days of hearing testimony, a jury found Mr. Bryan and the McMichaels guilty of murder and other charges. The verdict suggested that the jury agreed with prosecutors’ arguments that Mr. Arbery posed no imminent threat to the men and that the men had no reason to believe he had committed a crime, giving them no legal right to chase him through their suburban neighborhood.

“You can’t start it and claim self-defense,” the lead prosecutor argued in her closing statements. “And they started this.”

Jan. 31, 2022

Federal prosecutors reach a plea deal, but it’s rejected by a judge.

A day after prosecutors reached a plea deal with the McMichaels to plead guilty to federal charges, it was rejected by a judge. The proposed deal, which would have allowed the McMichaels to serve their federal prison terms before their state sentences, seemed to anger Mr. Arbery’s family, who told the judge about the ongoing trauma of losing him.

“I’m asking on the behalf of his family, on behalf of his memory, and on behalf of fairness that you do not grant this plea in order to allow these men to transfer out of Georgia state custody into the federal prisons, where they prefer to be,” said Wanda Cooper-Jones, Mr. Arbery’s mother.

Feb. 22, 2022

A jury finds the three men guilty of hate crimes.

Prosecutors in the subsequent federal trial of the three men argued that the murder of Mr. Arbery had been motivated by racism. Jurors in the case found the defendants guilty of hate crimes.

Richard Fausset, Michael Levenson, Sarah Mervosh and Derrick Bryson Taylor contributed reporting.