Ahmaud Arbery was hit with a truck before he died

William Bryan told investigators he heard Travis McMichael use a racial epithet after fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified Thursday during preliminary hearings.

Bryan told police McMichael said “f***ing n***er” after three blasts from McMichael’s shotgun left Arbery dead in February the streets of the Satilla Shores neighborhood, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richard Dial said.

Body camera footage also showed a Confederate flag sticker on the toolbox of McMichael’s truck, Dial said.

The allegations came as Dial outlined the events that led to Arbery’s death and told the court that before Arbery was shot, the three men charged in his murder engaged in an elaborate chase, hitting the 25-year-old jogger with a truck as he repeatedly tried to avoid them.

As Travis and Gregory McMichael attempted to head him off, Arbery turned and ran past the truck of Bryan, who filmed the killing, and Bryan struck Arbery with the side of his truck, Dial said.

The new details of the final moments of Arbery’s life emerged amid a week of nationwide protests over another killing — that of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis — and demonstrators have also called for justice in Arbery’s case.

Investigators found a swipe from a palm print on the rear door of Bryan’s truck, cotton fibers near the truck bed that “we attribute to contact with Mr. Arbery” and a dent below the fibers, he said.

Though Bryan’s attorney has contested allegations his client took part in the killing, Dial said Bryan first became involved by yelling to the McMichaels, “Do you got him?” when he saw them chasing the 25-year-old jogger. The McMichaels and Bryan have not entered pleas, but lawyers for all three men have proclaimed their innocence.

After yelling out to the McMichaels about Arbery, Bryan joined the chase, and at this point, none of the three had called 911, Dial said.

The McMichaels had already tried to head off Arbery once when Bryan joined the pursuit, the GBI agent said. Bryan tried to block in Arbery as Travis McMichael drove around the block with his father in the bed of the truck.

Bryan “made several statements about trying to block him in and using his vehicle to try to stop him,” Dial said. “His statement was that Mr. Arbery kept jumping out of the way and moving around the bumper and actually running down into the ditch in an attempt to avoid his truck.”

At one point, Arbery was heading out of the Satilla Shores neighborhood where the defendants live, but the McMichaels forced him to turn back into the neighborhood and run past Bryan, the agent said. That is when he struck Arbery, Dial said, and Arbery kept running with the McMichaels in pursuit.

Bryan turned around, and that is where the widely disseminated video of Arbery’s killing begins, he said.