‘He was not treated like a human’
Jacob Blake’s family speaks after shooting by police
A father of six lay in a hospital bed Tuesday, paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the back by Kenosha police, as his family called for justice and asked for prayers.
Jacob Blake will need a miracle to walk again, they said.
The bullets pierced his abdomen, shattered some of his vertebrae and severed his spinal cord, his family’s attorneys said Tuesday. He suffered damage to multiple internal organs and will require more surgeries.
The police shooting led to protests and violent unrest in Kenosha, Madison and other cities across the country, echoing those prompted by the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville and numerous others. Residents and business owners in Kenosha spent much of Tuesday sweeping shattered glass, nailing up plywood and taking stock of burned out buildings. Hours later as night fell and the city’s curfew passed, protesters and law enforcement were again facing off at Kenosha’s courthouse.
Blake was shot Sunday evening as he tried to get
“As I was riding through here, through the city, I noticed a lot of damage. That doesn’t reflect my son or my family . ... As I pray for my son’s healing physically, emotionally and spiritually, I also have been praying even before this for the healing of our country.”
Julia Jackson Mother of Jacob Blake
into a small SUV with his three sons, ages 8, 5, and 3, inside, according to video and statements from his family.
A bystander’s video of the shooting that swept across social media appeared to show the officer grab Blake by the back of his shirt as he tried to get into the SUV, then shoot him seven times at point-blank range. In the video, Blake did not appear to have anything in his hands.
“My son has been fighting for his life and we just really need prayers,” his mother, Julia Jackson, said. “As I was riding through here, through the city, I noticed a lot of damage. That doesn’t reflect my son or my family.
“We need healing,” she said. “As I pray for my son’s healing physically, emotionally and spiritually, I also have been praying even before this for the healing of our country.”
She visited her son earlier that day at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa. When she began to pray for him, he told her to stop and asked the police officer who was in the hospital room if he was a man of faith. The officer said yes.
Blake invited the officer to pray with them — and that’s exactly what all three of them did, his mother said.
Demands for transparency
Like much of the public, Blake’s family is demanding answers and transparency from authorities investigating the shooting.
But so far, little information has been released.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice, which is leading the investigation, has said it will attempt to present its findings to prosecutors within 30 days. Attorney Benjamin Crump, part of the legal team representing Blake’s family, has called for the officers involved to be fired and prosecuted.
“They shot my son seven times — seven times, like he didn’t matter,” said Blake’s father, also named Jacob Blake. “But my son matters. He’s a human being, and he matters.”
Neighbors who said they witnessed the shooting have told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other media outlets Blake appeared to be trying to defuse a situation between women before police arrived.
Ahead of Tuesday’s news conference, Crump echoed the neighbors’ accounts.
“Blake was helping to de-escalate a domestic incident when police drew their weapons and tasered him,” according to a news release from Crump’s office.
State and local authorities have not confirmed if police used a Taser on Blake during the interaction.
“The facts have not been confirmed yet,” Crump acknowledged Tuesday afternoon. “The police just haven’t given statements to the family . ... They want (the family) to talk but they won’t talk.”
“Before you keep demanding stuff from this family, why don’t you demand something from these police officers that shot him at least seven times in the back? What was their justification?” he said.
A timeline emerges
Although it is still unclear how the entire encounter unfolded, police radio transmissions, Kenosha police, video and witnesses provide a general time frame. Pieced together, the materials indicate less than three minutes elapsed between the time the first officer arrived and shots being fired.
Kenosha police were called to the 2800 block of 40th Street at 5:10 p.m. Sunday for “family trouble.” The dispatcher told officers that there was an alert for a person wanted for some reason at that address. Blake had a warrant issued for his arrest stemming from a domestic case in May.
The caller then said Blake was leaving and gave the dispatcher his license plate number, but not a description of the vehicle.
A third officer urgently radioed dispatchers asking for more officers. Around this time, a bystander took a video that showed Blake and two officers scuffling on the ground on the passenger side of a small gray SUV.
A different video, this one shot by a neighbor in a second-story apartment across the street, showed this scene from the driver’s side: Three officers, two male and one female, have their guns drawn and are behind Blake as he walks from the sidewalk around the front of the SUV.
The two male officers follow Blake closely, aiming their guns at Blake as he opens the SUV driver’s side door.
As Blake attempts to enter the SUV, an officer grabs his shirt, then shoots him in the back at close range. Seven gunshots can be heard, followed by the car’s horn as Blake slumps forward. A woman who followed them to the SUV screams.
The man who claimed to have recorded that video, 22-year-old Raysean White, told the Associated Press he saw Blake scuffling with three officers and heard them yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” before the gunfire erupted. He said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul declined to provide further information Monday and did not answer questions about whether Blake had been armed during any point of the incident. Kaul also did not say how many officers were involved in the shooting and did not name the officers, who have been placed on administrative leave.
‘He was not treated like a human’
Blake’s family, like so many others before them, have been thrust into a media spotlight they did not seek.
They asked the public to remember that Blake is a loving father, brother, son, cousin and uncle.
“His kids are his world,” his sister, Zietha Blake, said. “But not only that his family is his world.”
“He doesn’t even care about himself he’s more worried about us,” she added. “He was not treated like a human that day, he was treated like some foreign object that didn’t belong.”
The family has organized an online GoFundMe account to support Blake, a father of six, with medical and legal expenses. Within a day of being posted, it had surpassed $1 million in donations.
Letetra Widman, Blake’s sister, said she angry, numb and tired — not sad — over what had happened to her brother.
“Don’t be sorry, because this has been happening to my family for a long time,” she said, before naming other Black people shot by police, including Philando Castile and Michael Brown.
“I don’t want your pity,” she said. “I want change.”
Ricardo Torres, Jessica Rodriguez, Meg Jones, Sarah Volpenhein, Joe Taschler and Jordyn Noenning of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.