[ad_1]
Blake opened up about the August 23 shooting that left him paralyzed from the waist down in part of an interview that aired Thursday on “Good Morning America.”
“I was like, ‘He’s shooting me’,” said Blake, a 29 year old black man. “I couldn’t believe it, so I sort of sat in the car … I put my hands up, because I didn’t want him to shoot me in the face or in the head or nothing, he just kept shooting, kept shooting.
“My babies are here, my babies. So after he stopped shooting me, I said, ‘Daddy loves you no matter what,'” he said. “I thought that would be the last thing I told them. Thank goodness it wasn’t.”
The shooting, filmed, fueled protests last summer against racial injustice and police brutality initially sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Rusten Sheskey, the white officer who shot Blake, will not face criminal charges, Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced last week. showing Blake “actively resisting” his arrest and his possession of a knife at the time of the shooting.
The fact that Sheskey and two other officers had been on a family disturbance call was “urgent,” Graveley wrote in his investigation report into the shooting. Police also had an arrest warrant for Blake following an earlier domestic incident, Graveley said.
The incident started with a call to the police
Blake said he was trying to leave his son’s birthday party with his children after an argument broke out between Laquisha Booker, the mother of three of his children, and a neighbor.
“I wanted to leave. My son is inside, tears streaming from his eyes and he said, ‘Daddy, are you sure? It’s my birthday, “” Blake told ABC. “I’m taking them back to the store, make them forget about it all.”
As he was about to leave, Booker called the police, telling a dispatcher that he had taken the keys to an SUV she had rented and that she was afraid he would run over it.
According to the investigation report, Booker said Blake was “not supposed to be here” but gave him a few hours to spend with her son on his birthday.
When police arrived, Blake said they did not explain why they were there and did not say they had an arrest warrant – a statement disputed by the police statement to investigators .
“At that point, I go out,” he said. “I hadn’t done anything, so I didn’t feel like they were there for me.”
Blake says he shouldn’t have picked up a knife
Blake had just put one of his sons in the SUV when he felt one of the agents grab his arm.
A physical altercation broke out between Blake and the officers, who said they believed he was looking for a weapon. Blake told investigators he had a knife that fell to the ground when Sheskey first grabbed it, but denied he was going to use it as a weapon against the police. Sheskey unloaded his Taser, but Blake snapped the wires with his hand.
Blake picked up the knife and started walking towards the driver’s door of the SUV, away from the officers.
“I shouldn’t have picked it up,” he said, adding, “I wasn’t thinking clearly.” Blake said he intended to put the knife in the SUV and then lie on the ground to submit to the police.
“If they did it there and killed me there, everyone would see it.”
Blake told ABC he “didn’t hear” the police telling him to stop. “All I heard was screaming, screaming. My ears were ringing, so everything was muffled.”
In video captured from a second-floor apartment across the street, Blake is seen walking past the SUV with a knife in his hand. The officers have their weapons drawn and a male voice is heard: “Drop the knife!”
Moments later, after the officer grabs Blake’s shirt, seven gunshots are heard. Blake had four entry wounds on his back and three on his left side.
“Officer Sheskey faced a difficult and dangerous situation and he acted appropriately and in accordance with his training,” Kenosha Professional Police Association lawyer Brendan Matthews said in a statement. last week.
“The video remains difficult to view, but that doesn’t change what really happened. False and misleading accounts to the contrary must stop. Kenosha can and will move forward. This process begins now.”
Lawyers for the Blake family, in a statement last week, expressed disappointment at the decision not to indict Sheskey, saying the decision “failed not only Jacob and his family, but the community who protested and demanded justice”.
Speaking to “Good Morning America,” attorney Ben Crump said Blake’s past actions did not justify the shooting.
“If you’re black in America and you’re not perfect, then they say, ‘Oh, that was right,’,” he said. “It’s like our children have to be angels.”
According to ABC, Blake goes to rehab four days a week and is preparing for his 37th surgery since the shooting.
As for his children who witnessed the shooting, Blake said he explained, “Daddy may die, but for some reason I didn’t do it that day.”
CNN’s Melissa Alonso and Ray Sanchez contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link