(05-09-2020, 03:52 PM)B2hibry Wrote: I've seen the video and will have to reserve whole judgment. I don't condone acting like mercenaries and taking a life like these men did, but I came away with more questions than answers.

-What happens  previous to start of video?
- Why was Ahmaud jogging in the middle of the road? Most folks pick one side or the other.
-Do most people jog in basketball shoes?
- Who was following and filming?
-Why jog towards a perceived threat?
-Why stop to go after the perceived threat? Especially two armed "white guys".
-Did the truck have to pass him on the street to get to its parking spot?
-Where were the cops? There was apparently enough time to round up arms, drive down the road and park. There was also enough time for someone else to get in their car to follow and record.

During social distancing, if I'm jogging on a quiet residential street, I won't be in the middle of the road. I will, however, probably be in the road to stay well clear of others. 
I jog in what would probably amount to worn-down trail shoes, so jogging in basketball shoes is not a big deal to me. 
There's an investigation ongoing into the guy who was following and filming. I have theories, but they're totally unsubstantiated theories right now, and they're not really horrible or full of malicious intent at all. 
The truck may not have been perceived as a threat at that point. Cars stop on residential streets all the time to let someone out, pick someone up, etc. It is entirely possible that this started when the truck had to get around him, and either cut it close to "teach him a lesson", whatever, or stopped purely because the vehicle's occupants saw a black man jogging and decided he was a threat to their kla--I mean, clan.

No idea what happened prior to the video starting, no idea where the cops were. It's incredibly possible that they just hadn't responded yet, and possible that no one had called prior to the shots being fired. In fact, no one calling would be even more incriminating. If I see someone that I think justifies me pulling out a shotgun, I'm probably going to call 911 before engaging him--or just not engage him at all. Unless my goal is simply to teach that uppity jogger a lesson about which neighborhoods he's allowed to jog in, of course, in which case police presence would be wholly unwelcome and problematic.

Here's what it comes down to for me, just seeing the video without any further context: a black man in a white neighborhood in fricking Brunswick-[BLEEP] Georgia was stopped by two white men in a pickup truck, one of whom felt the need to equip himself with a boomstick despite there being nothing menacing about the black man aside from the color of his skin. A fight ensues. One man is in control of a shotgun, one man is unarmed, and the unarmed man ends up with a new vent in his chest. Oh, and there's video evidence of the whole thing going down like that. And did I mention that one of the two murderers (no other label for them given the video) used to work for the DA who was initially in charge of the case?

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