Arbery's mother: 'He will now rest in peace' after verdict

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After three men were convicted of murder for the death her son, Ahmaud Arbery's mother said Wednesday that she never thought she'd see the day come.

“It’s been a long fight. It’s been a hard fight. But God is good,” Wanda Cooper-Jones told a crowd gathered outside the courthouse in Glynn County. “To tell the truth, I never saw this day back in 2020. I never thought this day would come. But God is good."

Greg McMichael, son Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were convicted of murder in the February 2020 death of Arbery, who was chased and fatally shot while running through their coastal Georgia neighborhood in an attack that became part of the larger national reckoning on racial injustice.

Cooper-Jones' attorney, Lee Merritt, hailed his client's unflinching fight for justice.

“Eighteen months ago when she learned about the murder of her son, they told her that she would just have to deal with it alone," Merritt said. "They told her that there would be no arrest, that there would be no accountability, that there would be no justice. And she made her son a promise before she laid him in the ground, that his mom would fight for justice for him.”

Of the son she called Quez, Cooper-Jones said, “He will now rest in peace.”