While delivering a victim statement during the sentencing hearing on Friday, Cooper-Jones said that her son “sometimes refused to wear socks.”
“I wish he would have cut and cleaned his toenails before he went out for a jog that day,” she said. “I guess he would have if he knew he would be murdered.”
The comments by Cooper-Jones came in response to remarks made by attorney Laura Hogue, who previously represented Greg McMichael in the case of Arbery’s death.
During Hogue’s closing arguments in the initial trial hearing, she criticized Arbery’s feet and compared him to a “recurring nighttime intruder.”
“Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made, does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue said.
The comments initially sparked backlash from many, including Cooper-Jones who told CNN’s John Berman that she left the courtroom shortly after.
“I thought it was very, very rude to talk about his long, dirty toenails and to totally neglect that my son had a huge hole in his chest when he was shot with that shotgun,” she said.
According to CNN, prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump also criticized the comments, saying, “Unbelievably, you hear the defense lawyer, in her closing, say that Ahmaud Arbery had long legs with dirty toenails as if he was a runaway slave and [the defendants] were allowed to chase him and make him comply or kill him.”
In November, a jury convicted both McMichaels and Bryan guilty of murdering Arbery after the McMichaels chased him down and fatally shot him in February 2020.
The jury found Travis McMichael guilty of all nine charges, including felony murder and false imprisonment while his father, Greg McMichael was found guilty on eight of nine charges and Bryan was found guilty on six of nine charges.
During the sentencing hearing, Arbery’s father also spoke, calling on the judge to grant the maximum sentence for all three defendants.
“When I close my eyes, I see his execution in my mind over and over. I’ll see that for the rest of my life,” Arbery’s father said.
A judge sentenced both McMichael’s to life in prison without parole, while Bryant was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
During a press conference after the sentencing, Cooper-Jones spoke further about the “toenails” comment saying that Hogue “failed to mention that Ahmaud was lying there in the middle of the road with a big hole in his chest. She left that part out.”
“I didn’t want to mention that today, but I wanted to reiterate that Ahmaud was bigger than that,” Cooper-Jones added.
Update 1/7/22, 5:14 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include additional information about the sentencing and further comments from Cooper-Jones.
