Georgia Officials Arrest Man Who Allegedly Made Terroristic Threats Against Ahmaud Arbery Shooting Protesters
Christina Zhao, Newsweek, May 10, 2020
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) have arrested a 20-year-old man and charged him with making terroristic threats to protesters of Ahmaud Arbery’s deadly shooting.
Rashawn Smith was arrested in Midway, Georgia on Sunday and charged with the Dissemination of Information Relating to Terroristic Acts. Smith has been booked into the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office. The arrest came after the GBI were made aware of a Facebook post that “contained a threat to future protests related to Ahmaud Arbery,” the GBI said in a news release.
Nelly Miles, GBI’s public affairs director, told Newsweek that Smith had allegedly “created a Facebook User ID of an unwitting individual to post a hoax threat.” The incident is part of an ongoing and active investigation.
Protests have erupted across the country after a recently-surfaced video of Arbery’s deadly shooting went viral last week. The video showed the 25-year-old black man fall to the ground after a confrontation with two white men traveling in a truck. Arbery was unarmed and out for a jog in Georgia’s Glynn County at the time of his death.
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Newsweek reached out to the the Glynn County Police Department for further information. This story will be updated with any response.
[Editor’s Note: You can see the fake Facebook profile here.]
