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SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The metal gangway where dozens of people waited to board a ferry boat made a loud, creaking noise before snapping in the middle amid panicked cries from those sent plunging into the water. Some clung desperately to the railing, while others began to float away with the tidal current. "There was no time for anyone to get off," said Icy White, who watched from about 30 feet away at the ferry dock on Sapelo Island. "It took seconds." White's family was among hundreds visiting the isolated Georgia barrier island Saturday for a...
CORTEZ, Fla. (AP) — Floridians recovering from Hurricane Milton, many of whom were journeying home after fleeing hundreds of miles to escape the storm, spent much of Saturday searching for gas as a fuel shortage gripped the state. In St. Petersburg, scores of people lined up at a station that had no gas, hoping it would arrive soon. Among them was Daniel Thornton and his 9-year-old daughter Magnolia, who arrived at the station at 7 a.m. and were still waiting four hours later. "They told me they have gas coming but they don't know when it's goi...
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) — They rose up by the dozens from across Florida, caricatured competitors in tank tops and cutoff shorts, for a showdown that treats evading police and wrestling over beer like Olympic sports. Promoted as "the most insane athletic showdown on Earth," the Florida Man Games poke fun at the state's reputation for bizarre stories that involve brawling, drinking, gunfire, reptile wrangling and other antics carrying a risk of time in jail or intensive care. The games kicked off Saturday with the "Star Spangled Banner" p...
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) — They rose up by the dozens from across Florida, caricatured competitors in tank tops and cutoff shorts, for a showdown that treats evading police and wrestling over beer like Olympic sports. Promoted as "the most insane athletic showdown on Earth," the Florida Man Games poke fun at the state's reputation for bizarre stories that involve brawling, drinking, gunfire, reptile wrangling and other antics carrying a risk of time in jail or intensive care. The games kicked off Saturday with the "Star Spangled Banner" p...
When Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge fatally shot Leonard Cure during a roadside struggle after pulling him over for speeding, it wasn't the first time a traffic stop involving the Camden County sheriff's deputy had spiraled into violence. Last year, Aldridge dragged a driver from a car that crashed after fleeing the deputy on Interstate 95. Body and dash camera video obtained by The Associated Press show the driver on his back as Aldridge punches him. Records indicate the deputy faced no disciplinary action. Personnel records show Aldridge was fired...
A man recorded by a security camera fatally shooting his manager Thursday at a fast food restaurant in rural south Georgia is also suspected of killing his mother and grandmother at their nearby homes before taking his own life, authorities said. Security video from a McDonald's in Moultrie showed 26-year-old Kentavious White shoot the store manager after getting her to come to the door Thursday morning, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. The footage then showed White step inside the restaurant and shoot himself. Police found the...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A crowd of dozens chanted on a sweltering street corner Tuesday as Ahmaud Arbery's hometown unveiled new street signs honoring the young Black man who was fatally shot after being chased by three white men in a nearby neighborhood — a crime local officials vowed to never forget. Arbery's parents joined the celebration the day after the men responsible for their son's death received harsh prison sentences in U.S. District Court for committing federal hate crimes. Officials in coastal Brunswick, where Arbery grew up, hav...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The white father and son who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighborhood each received a second life prison sentence Monday — for committing federal hate crimes, months after getting their first for murder — at a hearing that brought a close to more than two years of criminal proceedings. U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood handed down the sentences against Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Greg McMichael, 66, reiterating the gravity of the February 2020 killing that shattered their Bruns...
DETROIT (AP) — In the long debate over whether Black Americans should be granted reparations for the atrocity and injustices of slavery and racism, California took a big step this week toward becoming the first U.S. state to make some form of restitution a reality. The state's reparations task force tackled the divisive issue of which Black residents should be eligible — it narrowly decided in favor of limiting compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century. Whether Tuesday's vote by t...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The three white men convicted of murder in Ahmaud Arbery's shooting were found guilty of federal hate crimes Tuesday in a verdict that affirmed what family members and civil rights activists said all along: that he was chased down and killed because he was Black. The verdict — handed down one day before the second anniversary of Arbery's death on Feb. 23, 2020 — was symbolic, coming just months after all three defendants were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court and sentenced to life in prison. But family and c...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A federal judge rejected a plea agreement Monday that would have averted a hate crimes trial for the white man convicted of murder for fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery, whose parents angrily objected to the deal as unfair and unjust. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood came just hours after prosecutors gave notice that son and father Travis and Greg McMichael had agreed to plead guilty to hate crime charges that they chased, threatened and killed 25-year-old Arbery because he was Black. But Travis M...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Three white men convicted of murder for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced to life in prison Friday, with a judge denying any chance of parole for the father and son who armed themselves and initiated the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man. Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley said Arbery left his home for a jog and ended up running for his life for five minutes as the men chased him until they finally cornered him. The judge paused for a minute of silence to help drive home a sense of what that t...
A Kentucky woman who worked her way up from school bus driver to become an administrator and school board member. A grandfather who "stole the show" when he was around his grandchildren. A 2-month-old whose family tried to protect her by putting her in a car seat. A 94-year-old Korean War veteran from Arkansas. These were among at least 88 people killed during tornadoes Friday night that ripped through five states in the Midwest and South. The tornado outbreak cut a path of devastation that stretched from Arkansas, where a nursing home was...
A 2-month-old whose family tried to protect her by putting her in a car seat. A 94-year-old Korean War veteran from Arkansas. A longtime florist in Tennessee who recently "started on her new adventure" as an airport security worker. An Amazon warehouse worker in Illinois. A Kentucky judge known for his common sense. These were among the dozens of people killed during Friday night's tornadoes that ripped through five states in the Midwest and South. There were dozens of confirmed deaths in Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee,...
The video of Ahmaud Arbery's shotgun death was a shocking piece of evidence that suddenly brought the Black man's killing into the national consciousness. But the murder convictions of the three white men who chased him may have been secured as much by their own words to investigators the day of the shooting. Greg McMichael, who was in the bed of a pickup truck when his son killed Arbery, told police the Black man "was trapped like a rat" and he told Arbery: "Stop, or I'll blow your f---ing head off!" Statements like that allowed prosecutors...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The case of three white men charged with murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery went to the jury Tuesday after a trial in which prosecutors argued that the defendants provoked the fatal confrontation and defense attorneys insisted their clients acted in self-defense. "You can't claim self-defense if you are the unjustified aggressor," Linda Dunikoski told jurors in her final statement. "Who started this? It wasn't Ahmaud Arbery." After more than two weeks of testimony and closing arguments, the prosecution got the last w...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Three men were convicted of murder Wednesday in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision when the white strangers chased him, trapped him on a quiet street and blasted him with a shotgun. The February 2020 slaying drew limited attention at first. But when video of the shooting leaked online, Arbery's death quickly became another example in the nation's reckoning of racial injustice in the way Black people are treated in their everyday lives. Now the men all f...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Months before Ahmaud Arbery was killed, shooter Travis McMichael wrote a simple, chilling response to a Facebook post about a suspected car burglary in his Georgia neighborhood: "Arm up." The item he commented on was sandwiched between chats about lost dogs and water service interruption, like in many online communities in the U.S. based around physical neighborhoods. But in the year before Arbery's death, the posts in the Facebook group for the subdivision where McMichael lived portray a neighborhood increasingly on e...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Attorneys made a final push Monday to persuade the jury in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, with the prosecution saying that three white men chased him solely "because he was a Black man running down the street" and defense attorneys repeatedly blaming Arbery for his own death. In closing arguments, a defense attorney for the man who fired the fatal gunshots said the 25-year-old Arbery was killed as he violently resisted a legal effort to detain him to answer questions about burglaries in a neighborhood just outside the p...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Prosecutors rested their case Tuesday in the trial of three white men charged with chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery after the jury saw graphic photos of the shotgun wounds that punched a gaping hole in his chest and unleashed bleeding that stained his white T-shirt entirely red. Prosecutors called 23 witnesses during eight days of testimony. They concluded with Dr. Edmund Donoghue, the state medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Arbery's body, followed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's lead investigator i...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery testified Wednesday that Arbery attacked him and grabbed his shotgun after he and his father pursued the 25-year-old Black man in their Georgia neighborhood. Travis McMichael's testimony came as defense attorneys in the murder trial for the three white men accused of killing Arbery opened their case by building on arguments that their clients were lawfully trying to stop burglaries in their neighborhood. Asked by his attorney why he shot Arbery, McMichael responded: "He had my gun. H...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A judge denied mistrial requests Monday at the trial of three white men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery after defense attorneys claimed jurors were tainted by weeping from the gallery where the slain Black man's parents sat with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The morning's testimony was largely disrupted by arguments outside the jury's presence over Jackson's appearance. The judge said he found one defense lawyer's complaints last week about Black pastors to be "reprehensible" and no group would be excluded from his courtroo...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — One of the three white men standing trial for the death of Ahmaud Arbery said they had the 25-year-old Black man "trapped like a rat" before he was fatally shot, a police investigator testified Wednesday. Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and chased Arbery in a pickup truck after they spotted him running in their coastal Georgia neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, joined the pursuit in his own truck and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three t...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Jurors were shown graphic, closeup police photos Monday of the gunshot wounds that killed Ahmaud Arbery, while the first officer to find the 25-year-old Black man bleeding in the road testified he did not try to render medical aid because it would not have been safe. Three white men are on trial for murder and other crimes in the slaying of Arbery, who was chased and shot Feb. 23, 2020, after he was spotted running in a neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick. Glynn County police Sgt. Sheila Ramos walked t...
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Prosecutors and defense attorneys on Friday presented dueling portraits of Ahmaud Arbery, who was either an innocent Black runner fatally shot by three white strangers or "a scary mystery" who had been seen prowling around a Georgia neighborhood. In her opening statement, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said the short cellphone video that stirred national outrage over Arbery's slaying offered only a glimpse of the attack on the 25-year-old, who gave his pursuers no reason to suspect him of any wrongdoing. "They assumed that h...
