Jacob Blake, the Blackman who was shot seven times by a Kenosha police officer, said he believed he was going to die and shared the last words with his children after the August shooting.
Blake, 29, was partially paralyzed during the Aug. 23 shooting that touched on days of protests and unrest in the city of Wisconsin and elsewhere.
“I got a little slack,” Blake told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview airing Thursday. And all I remembered at that point was to sit back and look at my boys. I said, ‘Daddy loves you, no matter what. ‘
“I thought it was going to be the last thing – I thought it was going to be the last thing I told them,” he said. “Thank God it wasn’t.”
The interview comes a week after Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced that no police officers would be charged in the shooting.
Blake was shot seven times by Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey. Some of the shots were found from behind.
Sheskey responded to a house riot at the time and officials said Blake had a warrant for his arrest. The district attorney resisted Blake while armed with a knife.
Blake was shot after moving to a “disputed car” in which at least one child was, Graveley said. He said Blake admitted to investigators that he had a knife, but he did not know if he opened it.
Graveley said that Sheskey and other officers would have had a strong case for self-defense, and that ‘if you do not believe you can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, you have an ethical obligation not to issue complaints. . ‘
The shooting was captured on video and sparked protests over the summer that sometimes turned violent when protesters called for racial justice and police reform.
Amid protests in Kenosha, Kyle Rittenhouse, now 18, who is from nearby Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, allegedly shot dead two men. Rittenhouse has been charged with felony criminal mischief and has been charged with felony criminal mischief.
Blake’s shooting followed the death of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in May and the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in March.
