The mother of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black jogger shot dead in the South of the United States, filed a civil suit on Tuesday, one year to the day after the death of her son whose memory has been hailed by Joe Biden.
Read also: United States: request for federal investigation into the murder of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery
"A black man should be able to jog without fearing for his life,"
tweeted the Democratic president on this anniversary, marked by several commemorations.
“Today we celebrate the life of Ahmaud Arbery and we are committed to making this country safer for people of color,”
he added.
For her part, Wanda Cooper has taken legal action to obtain a million dollars in compensation.
Her complaint targets the three white men indicted for the murder of her son, but also local police and prosecutors whom she accuses of having sought to hush up a case that has become emblematic of the "Black Lives Matter" movement (black lives matter).
Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was shot dead on February 23, 2020 while running in a residential area in Brunswick, Georgia, with a long segregationist past.
For more than two months, the police did not make any arrests and it took the broadcast of a video of the drama, massively relayed on social networks at the beginning of May, for the investigation to be withdrawn and to really start.
Soon after, authorities arrested Gregory McMichael, a former investigator attached to the local prosecutor's office, and his son Travis, visible in the video.
The author of the recording, William Bryan, was arrested two weeks later.
They have since been charged with
"murder"
and
"false arrest"
and remain in detention pending trial.
On the day of the tragedy, the three men
“chased Ahmaud with their pickup.
Animated by 'the visceral feeling' that he was responsible for a series of burglaries in the neighborhood, they shot him at point blank range three times, ”
according to his mother's complaint.
“For nearly three months, Glynn County police officers, their leader and two prosecutors colluded to cover up the circumstances of Ahmaud's death and protect his murderers,” she
adds.
Ahmaud Arbery's name resonated across the United States in giant protests against violence against African Americans, along with those of George Floyd, suffocated by a white policeman in Minneapolis, and Breonna Taylor, shot dead in her Louisville home by officers apparently in the wrong apartment.