Jacob Blake
On August 23, 2020, Jacob S. Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot and seriously injured by police officer Rusten Sheskey in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake placed a knife in his right hand and opened the driver's door of an SUV before turning towards Sheskey, who shot Blake in the back four times and the side three times. Sheskey said that he believed he was about to be stabbed. Earlier during the encounter, Blake had been tased by two officers, but the tasers failed to disable him and he continued toward the vehicle.
Blake had a warrant for his arrest from July, based on charges of third-degree felony sexual assault and trespassing and disorderly conduct for domestic abuse in May. Both Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis and the Kenosha Professional Police Association stated that the officers dispatched on August 23 were aware of the pending warrant for Blake before they arrived on scene; dispatch records confirm this.
The police shooting was followed by widespread unrest in Kenosha, which included rallies, marches, property damage, arson, and clashes with police. During the unrest, two men were fatally shot by an armed civilian, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse from Antioch, Illinois. Blake's name was invoked in protests in other cities as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, which resurged in the wake of several high-profile killings by police officers in 2020.
In January 2021, Kenosha County prosecutors announced that the officers involved in the shooting would not be charged, and Sheskey returned to regular police duty in April 2021.
Prosecutors also announced that Blake would not face any new charges. After the mother of Blake's children refused to cooperate with prosecutors, they dropped the previous sexual assault and trespassing charges against Blake in exchange for him pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and domestic abuse, for which he was sentenced to two years of probation.
MY UNIVERSE
- 2024-12-31T00:00:00.000000Z
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