The Feb. 11 confrontation
According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, however, the property owner may have alerted another neighbor, Diego Perez, that someone was in his property Feb. 11. English lives about 90 miles away from the neighborhood, but had motion-sensor cameras installed that pinged his phone when there was someone on the property, according to Perez.
Perez armed himself and walked up the road that night to check on the house, where he encountered Travis McMichael in his truck, he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Travis was alerted to the Feb. 11 incident. A phone number wasn’t publicly listed for Perez, and he did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Attorneys for Arbery’s family also didn’t immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment, either.
“Travis saw him in the yard and Travis stopped,” Perez told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He confronted (the man) halfway into the yard.
He said (the man) reached for his waistband, and Travis got spooked and went down the road.”
Travis left and came back with his father, who apparently called the Glynn County Police Department that night, according to Perez. A police report from around 7 p.m. that night showed that a man called local police about a man roaming around a home under construction. The caller is identified in the report as Travis McMichael, and the police says that English had an "ongoing issue with an unknown black male continually trespassing upon the property." Police called English, who told them he believed the man hadn't taken anything, and was only trespassing.
Videos and descriptions of the man, who at the time wasn't known to residents, circulated on a neighborhood Facebook page and on the website Nextdoor, according to the police report.
Perez did not see Arbery again until Feb. 23, when he bled out in the middle of the road from the gunshot wounds. He’s listed as a witness on a police report from that day, which notes the McMichaels claimed
they saw Arbery “the other night” with his “hand down his pants, which led them to believe the male was armed.” He wasn’t.
An attorney for English, the owner of the property, did not immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment. Elizabeth Graddy, who represents English, has said that his motion-sensor camera alerted him to potential entries at the under-construction property numerous times, leading him to once call a non-emergency police line. However, Graddy told
NBC News, English never used the word “burglary,” as nothing had ever been stolen from the property.
