Blake spoke about the August 23 shooting that left him paralyzed from the waist down in part of an interview that aired on “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
“I was like, ‘He’s shooting me,’ ‘he said. Blake, a 29-year-old Blackman. “I could not believe it, so I sat in the car … raised my hands, because I did not want him to shoot me in the face or in the head or anything. He just kept shooting, kept shooting.
“My babies are here, my babies. When he stopped shooting me, I said, ‘Daddy loves you, no matter what,'” he said. “I thought it was going to be the last thing. “Thank God it wasn’t.”
The shooting, which was captured on video, sparked protests last summer over racial injustice and police brutality initially caused by the death of George Floyd among Minneapolis police.
Rusten Sheskey, the white officer who shot Blake, will not face criminal charges, Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced last week. and points out that Blake “actively resists” the arrest a sight possession of a knife at the time of the shooting.
That Sheskey and two other officers were on a domestic call was “urgently needed,” Graveley wrote in his investigative report on the shooting. Police also had a warrant for Blake’s arrest for a previous domestic incident, Graveley said.
The incident began 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 are coming out of his eyes and he said, ‘Dad, sure? It’s my birthday.’ “I’ll take them to the store again, let them forget about all this,” Blake told ABC.
When he was ready to leave, Booker called police and told a dispatcher he had taken the keys to an SUV she had rented and she was afraid he would crash it.
According to the investigation report, Booker said Blake ‘should not have been here’, but she allowed him to spend a few hours with his son on his birthday.
When police arrived, Blake said they did not explain why they were there and did not say they had a warrant for his arrest – a statement disputed by the officers’ statement to investigators.
“At that point, I walk out,” he said. “I did nothing, so I did not feel that they were there for me.”
Blake says he should not have picked up the knife
Blake had just put one of his sons in the SUV when he felt one of the officers grab his arm.
A physical altercation ensued between Blake and the officers, who they believe believed he was grabbing a weapon. Blake told investigators he had a knife that fell to the ground when Sheskey first grabbed him, but denied he was going to use it as a weapon against officers. Sheskey unloaded his Taser, but Blake broke the wires with his hand.
Blake pick up the knife and start walking to the driver’s door from the SUV, away from the officers.
“I should not have picked it up,” he said, adding, “I did not think clearly.” Blake said he intended to put the knife in the sport utility vehicle and then lay it on the ground to hand it over to police officers.
“If they do it there and kill me there, everyone will see it.”
Blake told ABC he could not hear officers telling him to stop. “All I heard was screaming, screaming. My ears rang, so it was all muted. ‘
In a video captured from an apartment on the second floor across the street, he is seen walking with a knife in his hand in front of the sports utility vehicle. The officers’ rifles are drawn, and a male voice is heard shouting, “Lower the knife!”
Moments later, after officer grabbed Blake’s shirt, seven shots were heard. Blake had four entrance wounds to his back and three to his left.
“Officer Sheskey was faced with 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 is still difficult to watch, but it does not change what really happened. False and misleading narratives, on the contrary, must stop. Kenosha can and will move forward in this direction. The process is starting now.”
Lawyers from the Blake family expressed disappointment in a statement last week over the decision not to sue Sheskey, saying the decision “failed not only Jacob and his family but also the community that protested and demanded justice. ”
Attorney Ben Crump said with “Good Morning America” that Blake’s actions in the past did not justify the shooting.
“If you’re a black person in America, and you’re not perfect, then they say, ‘Oh, that was justified,'” he said. “It’s like our kids have to be angels.”
According to ABC, Blake goes to physical rehabilitation 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, “Dad could die, but for some reason I did not have the day.”
CNN’s Melissa Alonso and Ray Sanchez contributed to this report.