Wanda Cooper-Jones opens up about the pain of her son’s 2020 murder, and how her philanthropic partnership with Adidas is making a difference in his honor

NEED TO KNOW

• Ahmaud Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, opens up about his murder five years later
• She reveals he was using running as a form of therapy at the time of his killing
• Cooper-Jones reflects on ongoing philanthropic support from Adidas and her son’s legacy

The holidays are a particularly difficult time for Wanda Cooper-Jones.

“After Thanksgiving, there’s Christmas, then after Christmas, I have to relive the days that it actually happened in February, so my days are kind of dark, but I’m pushing through,” she tells PEOPLE, opening up about her son Ahmaud Arbery‘s murder on Feb. 23, 2020.

On that day, the 25-year-old Black jogger was out for a run on a suburban Georgia street when he was chased, attacked and gunned down by three White men who alleged they suspected Arbery of burglary. The assailants were all found guilty of murder in 2022.

In the years since Cooper-Jones has found solace in the community of supporters and runners that have sprung up around her, including the partnership she found in Adidas. The sportswear brand is a major contributor to the Ahmaud Arbery Foundation she created in her son’s honor.

To mark #GivingTuesday, Adidas selected Cooper-Jones as one of a chosen few community leaders, cultural figures and groups spotlighted in the brand’s new Community Archives zine, chronicling her story as a mother who took the worst and turned it into an opportunity to help and advance opportunities for others.

The partnership plays a big role in how she remembers her son.

“Every Feb. 23, with the sponsorship of Adidas, we have a community run where people in the running community come out and they drop the 2.23 miles,” she says of the distance that supporters run to commemorate the date of his death. “It’s kind of dark in the morning, but just coming out and seeing people that are still running with Maud, it’s very, very rewarding.”

On the day of her son’s last run, “He was actually having some mental challenges,” she shares.

“He had moved out, and I’m not sure what happened to my baby, but he was going through something and I saw it and I thought it was my job as mom to let him walk through it,” Cooper-Jones tells PEOPLE. “Ahmaud would run every day, and when he would finish running, he would come in. I think he used running as a sense of therapy.”

On most days, “Ahmaud was a jokester,” she says. “He’s a funny, good, loving guy. If he left the room on me, even the house, the last thing he would say is, ‘I love you’. And the last time that I actually saw my son alive, that the last thing he told me.”

For more than a year, Cooper-Jones refused to watch the footage of the moment her son was killed that was released.

“Right after it happened and the days that the video was put out there, those days were really hard,” she says. “Without the community being involved, there’s no way that we would’ve made it through that, and without the community, I must say, we probably wouldn’t have got justice for Ahmaud. It wasn’t just me screaming justice, but it was people in our community, people in the state of Georgia, and all around the nation.”

In fact, it was her fight for justice that finally caused her to watch the video. “We went through state trials in October of 2021, and just before that, I wanted to make myself familiar with what the video was all about, so I watched it prior to going into trial.” However, she adds, “We didn’t get justice because I saw the video. We got justice because we all saw that video.”

In January 2022, Greg and Travis McMichael were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an extra 20 years. William “Roddie” Bryan was also sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Says Cooper-Jones, “They’re being punished for what they did, but I’m being punished every day because my son’s not here.”

These days, coping with that loss remains extremely difficult. “It may have happened years ago, but it’s not a day that comes, I don’t think about my son and the way his life ended,” she says. “I think I struggled a lot with the way he was killed. He was alone, he was scared, and all he wanted to do was go home.”

While she and Ahmaud’s siblings, Marcus and Jasmine, remain in therapy, Cooper-Jones says that over the past five years, the best balm has been the change she’s been able to bring about in her son’s honor.

“In the first couple of months after Ahmaud was killed, Governor [Brian] Kemp here in Georgia, he implemented the Hate Crime Law, which we didn’t have in the state of Georgia. Also, he did away with the Law of Citizens’ Arrest, that’s no longer on the books here in Georgia. That’s his legacy. Ahmaud changed things.”

It’s a mission she’s continued with the foundation, which, with support from Adidas, has given out $75,000 in scholarships to young men who attended her son’s high school. She also hosts a leadership summit and a year-long program for young school-aged men. Between that and the thousands of runners who have taken to the streets in the spirit of Ahmaud each year, she’s finding her way.

“If I could tell Wanda from 2020 anything, I’d tell her not to give up,” she says. “I’d tell her to give yourself grace and to allow people around you to help. You can’t take this journey alone.”