Breaking: How Gang Leader Threat Led to Arrests in Ahmaud Arbery Case

"Chilling Phone Call" from Georgia Prison Doomed Greg and Travis McMichael

All credit to author Mary Grabar for unearthing an extraordinary essay written by Gerald Griggs and Dontaye Carter, simply titled, “The Ahmaud Arbery Case.” The essay was published in a book used in college classrooms called Reconciliation: The Final Step in Achieving Nonviolent Social Change. Griggs, an attorney advising the NAACP, and Carter, a business owner, exchange observations in this essay. Griggs’s are the ones that startle. [Correction. In earlier version I attributed critical commentary to Carter]

Arbery, as I have documented, was shot and killed by Travis McMichael in February 2020 while the two men grappled for Travis’s shotgun. Travis’s father Greg watched the struggle from the bed of his pick-up truck. Neighbor Roddy Bryan recorded the incident on his cell phone from his truck roughly 100 feet away. The McMichaels and Bryan would all be convicted of murder with the McMichaels being sentenced to life without parole.

As Carter tells the story, attorney Griggs sent him the link of the just released Bryan video. “I watched as a young Black man—who could’ve been my brother, my cousin, even my future son—ran for his life. The terror in his eyes, the desperation in his movement-it was all there.”

In fact, the video was shot from behind Arbery as he ran toward the McMichaels’ truck, which was stopped at an intersection. Arbery’s face was barely visible, let alone his eyes. He could have run for his life, or at least run to avoid arrest, if he had jogged off through an open field to the right of the truck. Instead, he made a 90-degree turn once he reached the right front of the truck, dashed towards Travis at the left front, and grabbed his shotgun. Arbery was killed in the struggle to control it. Thinking the video exculpatory, Greg McMichael, a retired LEO, made the decision to release it.

Local authorities agreed with Greg and ruled the homicide justifiable, citing in this case Georgia's citizen arrest law. Wrote George Barnhill, a district attorney from a neighboring county assigned to the case, “It is my professional belief the autopsy confirms what we had already viewed as shown in the video tape, with the photographs & from the witness statements taken immediately at the scene. The autopsy supports the initial opinion we gave you on February 24th, 2020….We do not see grounds for an arrest of any of the three parties.”

“For months,” writes Griggs, “law enforcement had controlled the narrative. Ahmaud was described as a thief, a robber, a young Black man up to no good.” Whether law enforcement controlled the narrative is debatable, but their description of Arbery was accurate.

Law enforcement pulls out taser to subdue Arbery in previous engagement

The McMichaels and their neighbors had called the police on Arbery multiple times. So had Arbery’s own mother who confessed to being frightened of her son. The mentally unwell 25-year-old was caught in a downward emotional spiral that, in this case, turned a “young man with dreams” into a pathological thief and chronic troublemaker.

“As the public outrage grew, so did the urgency for justice. The state had been too slow to act, and it wasn’t just activists and attorneys who noticed,” writes Griggs. “One night, I received an unexpected and chilling phone call. On the other end of the line was a national gang leader calling from inside a Georgia prison.”

Greg with Travis’s son in happier times

If what Griggs relates is true, and there is no reason to doubt him, the defendants in this case deserve, at the very least, a retrial. “The message was clear and terrifying,” writes Griggs. Here he quotes the gang leader, “If those boys ain’t off the street in 48 hours, there will be street justice.” By those “boys,” he meant the McMichaels.

“That moment sent a chill down my spine,” adds Griggs “I knew we were reaching a tipping point— if the legal system didn’t act now, the streets would take matters into their own hands.” To this point in the narrative, one could dismiss the gang leader’s threats as so much bluster. What Griggs writes next that is what’s most disturbing.

“I immediately contacted the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and relayed the message in no uncertain terms. The response was swift. Within hours of that conversation, the GBI arrested the McMichaels.” The shooting took place on February 23, 2020. On May 4, the video was released. On May 5, the GBI took control of the case from local authorities. On May 7, the GBI arrested the McMichaels, and they have not been out of lockup since. Griggs may be overstating his importance, but his intent is clear. Authorities had better act or else.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died in police custody, and the nation erupted in an orgy of orchestrated rage. Bryan and the McMichaels never had a chance. While they were awaiting their trial on state murder charges, Biden’s DOJ indicted them on hate crime charges which further poisoned the jury pool. Now certifiable racists, the defendants went to trial in November 2021, several months after Derek Chauvin’s conviction for “murdering” Floyd in Minneapolis.

The “streets” were worrisome enough, but just about every major institution in the state lined up against the defendants. As I documented recently, the area’s Episcopal leaders sent a letter to all congregants “ahead of jury selection” suggesting how the faithful should respond to the “sin of racism” should they become jurors.

More chilling, at a February 2026 symposium, Judge Timothy Walmsley unwittingly revealed how pressure from “the people” affected his management of the case. “What I took from the case,” said Walmsley, a South African native, “was how important it was as a judge to make sure that no matter what ended up happening in that case, whether you agreed with the verdict or not, people could accept the verdict.” The “people” that most worried Walmsley, I suspect, were the protestors menacing the courthouse, not to mention those calling from prison.

Republican Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Chris Carr

Attorney General Chris Carr, who orchestrated the case against Bryan and the McMichaels, is the kind of Republican that would quit as chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association due to "vastly opposite views of the significance of the events of January 6" and then boast about it.

Carr is now running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination as a literal gang-buster. Said Carr on Tuesday, “Gang activity won’t be tolerated in this state, no matter where it’s found.” Except perhaps on a useful phone call from prison.