Attorneys for Travis McMichael, charged with murder in the Feb. 23 death of Ahmaud Arbery, implored the public not to rush judgment on the case before knowing all the facts.

“We are asking everybody who is following this case….. who are forming opinions without knowing all the facts to just take a breath because all the facts will come out,” attorney Robert Rubin told reporters outside of his Decatur, Georgia office on Thursday. 

Rubin and Jason Sheffield said they were retained by Travis McMichael on Monday.

According to The Macon Telegraph in Georgia, Gregory McMichael, also charged with murder in the case, has retained attorneys Laura D. Hogue and her husband, Franklin J. Hogue of Macon. 

Sheffield said they plan to ask a judge to release Travis McMichael on bond. He expects there will be a virtual bond hearing soon. 

Sheffield and Rubin declined to release many details about the case, but said McMichael has a “presumption of innocence.”

The legal team representing Arbery’s family issued a statement of their own on Thursday.

“We agree with the attorneys for Travis McMichael that the justice system affords all citizens the presumption of innocence and that there shouldn’t be a rush to judgment or stereotyping,” said S. Lee Merritt, Benjamin Crump and L. Chris Stewart, attorneys for the mother and father of Arbery, “We only wish that their client . . . had provided that same presumption of innocence to Ahmaud Arbery before chasing and killing him.”

They added, “The men who ambushed Ahmaud Arbery rushed to judgment . . . Mr. Arbery is the victim and his family was left with a lifetime of pain. The family continues to pray for justice for Ahmaud.”

Rubin said they would be reviewing the video and other evidence as well as talking to witnesses. 

“Our commitment you and Mr. McMichael is to review everything in this case and not judge anything until we have all the facts,” Sheffield said. 

Days before Arbery was pursued by the McMichaels and fatally shot after being spotted inside a home under construction, neighbors – including one of the suspects – reported an earlier encounter with a person wandering through the open-framed structure.

Owner Larry English found nothing stolen from the site where he’s building a home in the Satilla Shores subdivision where 25-year-old Arbery was slain Feb. 23, English’s attorney said Wednesday. But she said there had been “four or five” instances in which unauthorized people entered the property before Arbery was shot.

“Nothing was ever taken from the English property,” attorney J. Elizabeth Graddy said in a statement Wednesday. She added that “Mr. English is deeply distressed by Mr. Arbery’s death.”

A 911 call more than a week before the shooting

Graddy also shared security camera video from the home site taken Feb. 11, less than two weeks before the shooting, that briefly shows a man walking inside the structure. She said English has been unable to find security video from the prior instances.

Attorneys for Arbery’s family have said a man caught on security video from English’s home immediately before the shooting was Arbery and the footage shows he committed no crime. It’s unknown whether it’s also Arbery in the newly released video taken 11 days earlier.

Travis McMichael called 911 on Feb. 11 to report what he considered to be a suspicious man at the construction site, according to audio obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“I was leaving the neighborhood and I just caught a guy running into a house being built,” McMichael said during the 911 call, according to the newspaper. “When I turned around, he took off running into the house.”

“We’ve been having a lot of burglaries and break-ins around here lately,” McMichael told the operator.

English lives far from where the home is being built just outside the port city of Brunswick, 70 miles south of Savannah. Graddy said the night of Feb. 11 he received an alert when motion inside the construction site triggered a security camera. English sent a text message to a neighbor, Diego Perez, asking him to check on the house.

According to Graddy, the neighbor soon sent English a text: “The police showed up and we all searched for a good while. I think he got spooked and ran after Travis confronted him. Travis says the guy ran into the house. Let me know if he shows up or if they find him.”

Travis McMichael lives near the home English is building. He is charged with felony murder and aggravated assault, accused of firing the three shotgun blasts that struck Arbery at close range. His father, former police officer and district attorney’s investigator Gregory McMichael, also has been jailed on the same charges. As of Wednesday afternoon, no attorneys had filed notice with Glynn County Magistrate Court that they were representing the McMichaels.

English declined to comment to the Associated Press when reached by phone Wednesday, instead referring a reporter to his attorney.

Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, has said her son was merely jogging through the subdivision at the time. He lived with his mother roughly 2 miles from the subdivision where he was shot.

More than two months passed before the McMichaels were charged in the case. They were arrested last week soon after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation began looking into the case and cellphone video of Arbery’s killing leaked online, causing a national outcry.

According to an incident report by Glynn County police, Gregory McMichael, 64, said he and his son armed themselves and chased Arbery in a pickup truck after seeing him run down their street. Gregory McMichael told police he suspected Arbery was a burglar, and said  Arbery attacked McMichael’s 34-year-old son before the younger McMichael shot him.

“Even if something had have got stolen from my property and it had been Ahmaud, I wouldn’t have wanted him to have lost his life for it,” English told CBS This Morning.

Brumback reported from Atlanta.

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