Georgia’s attorney general has asked the US Department of Justice to investigate the handling of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who authorities say died at the hands of two white men as he ran through a neighbourhood.

“We are committed to a complete and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case was handled from the outset,” Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement.

Lee Merritt, a lawyer representing the family of Ahmaud Arbery, poses for a photo by a mural in the likeness of Mr Arbery (Tony Gutierrez/AP)

Several hundred people protested the case Friday in Brunswick, near the site where Mr Arbery was fatally shot.

The father and son said they thought Mr Arbery matched the appearance of a burglary suspect who they said had been recorded on a surveillance camera some time before.

Mr Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, has said she thinks her son, a former high school football player, was just jogging in the neighborhood before he was killed.