Jacob Blake, the man shot seven times in the back by Wisconsin police on Sunday, is currently handcuffed in bed, his father has said - des...
Jacob Blake, the man shot seven times in the back by Wisconsin police on Sunday, is currently handcuffed in bed, his father has said - despite being paralyzed and charged with no crime.
Outrage spread quickly at the news, and people demanded Kenosha police remove the handcuffs.
'How the f**k do you handcuff Jacob Blake that you paralyzed to a hospital bed after you shot him in the back seven times?' tweeted Rashida Tlaib, congresswoman for the neighboring state of Michigan.
Tony Evers, governor of Wisconsin, was asked if he's concerned about Blake being handcuffed.
'Hell yes,' he said.
Jacob Blake Sr said he was shocked to see his son being handcuffed to his hospital bed
Jacob Blake, 29, has been left paralyzed from the waist down in Sunday's shooting
Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by Officer Rusten Sheskey on Sunday
Sheskey grabbed Blake's vest as he was getting into a car and shot him seven times in the back
'I would have no personal understanding why that would be necessary.
'I can't imagine why that's happening and I would hope that we would be able to find a better way to have him get better and recover.'
Jacob Blake Sr told the Chicago Sun Times that he had just been to see his son in hospital.
'I hate it that he was laying in that bed with the handcuff onto the bed,' he said.
'He can't go anywhere. Why do you have him cuffed to the bed?'
Blake also asked what he had been arrested for, and received no answer.
The Blake family attorney, Benjamin Crump, said it would take a 'miracle' for Blake to recover use of his legs.
'The medical diagnosis right now is that he is paralyzed, because those bullets severed his spinal cord,' he said at a press conference on Tuesday.
'He will need a miracle to walk again. He is currently in surgery as we speak, to try and save his life. And return to some semblance of the man he once was.'
Crump's legal partner, Patrick Salvi, confirmed that a bullet went through his spinal cord. He had bullets in his stomach, and had to have almost his entire colon removed. He had a bullet in the kidney, and in the arm.
'He has a long road to recovery,' said Mr Salvi.
When Blake, 29, saw his father in the hospital Wednesday, he thought he was hallucinating because he could not believe what he was seeing, according to his father.
'I told him, 'You thought Daddy wasn't going to see my son?' his father said.
'He grabbed my hand, held it real tight and started weeping, telling me how much he loved me.'
Though his son's eyes were swollen, the elder Jacob Blake said he 'looked and sounded like' his son, and he's alive.
Seeing him in the hospital was like walking across a desert to find someone waiting with a glass of water, his father said.
'It was way more than fulfilling,' his father said.
'It was a feeling I can't describe.'
Kenosha police did not respond to questions about why Blake was handcuffed.
Vanita Gupta, former head of the civil rights division of the department of justice, tweeted: 'I have no words.'
Renatto Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said: 'Jacob Blake was shot in the back multiple times and is paralyzed from the waist down.
'What possible justification could there be for handcuffing him to his hospital bed?'
Wesley Lowery, correspondent for 60 Minutes, said he had just spoken to Blake's uncle, who was deeply distressed by the handcuffing of his nephew.
'One thing the family is particularly upset about — the uncle just gave me a call to make sure I had noted this in our interview — is that Jacob Blake, shot seven times and paralyzed, has been handcuffed to his hospital bed,' Lowery said.
Tlaib, member of the 'squad' and congresswoman for neighboring Michigan, was outraged
The former head of the civil rights division for the DoJ said: 'I have no words'
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotto asked: 'What possible justification' could there be
60 Minutes correspondent Wesley Lowery said that Blake's family was deeply upset
Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Blake in the back, is a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha Police Department.
Sheskey, 31, has been put on administrative leave while Wisconsin officials investigate the confrontation caught on video.
Sheskey, a member of the department's bicycle squad, long aspired to a law enforcement career and once described police work as 'a customer service job, and the public is our customer.'
On Thursday officials announced that the National Guard will send troops from three additional states - Arizona, Alabama and Michigan - to Kenosha to assist with operations there.
Rusten Sheskey, 31, shot Blake seven times in the back. He has been placed on leave
Evers had already authorized the deployment of the Wisconsin National Guard to Kenosha, and declared a state of emergency Tuesday and enforced an overnight curfew lasting until Sunday.
On Tuesday night protests at Blake's shooting descended into lethal violence in which two men, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, and Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, were shot dead.
Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested on Wednesday at his home in Antioch, Illinois, accused of killing the protesters.
In Washington, the Justice Department said it was sending in more than 200 federal agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The White House said up to 2,000 National Guard troops would be made available.
The Justice Department also announced that the U.S. attorney's office and FBI would conduct a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Blake, in cooperation with Wisconsin state law enforcement agencies.
Groups that had taken to Kenosha's streets with long guns were nowhere to be seen early Thursday following somber protests and no widespread unrest for the first night since the weekend police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Marchers were solemn during Wednesday night's protests in the southeastern Wisconsin city between Milwaukee and Chicago following the chaos of the previous night.
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