- Kamala Harris told NBC News on Thursday that the police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back “should be charged.”
- Blake was shot in the back several times Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while opening the door to a car with his three young children.
- The officer who pulled the tractor has been identified as Rusten Sheskey, who joined the Kenosha Police Department in 2013.
- Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, is now paralyzed from the waist down and in handcuffs to his hospital bed, his father said Thursday.
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Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she believes the police officer who repeatedly shot Jacob Blake in the back, and left him paralyzed, should be charged with a crime.
“I do not have all the evidence,” the California senator told NBC News, but “based on what I have seen, it seems to accuse the officer.”
Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was repeatedly shot in the back on Sunday, in front of his three young children, by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He is now recovering in a hospital while he was restrained to bed, his father said Thursday. No charges have been filed against him.
The officer who pulled the tractor has been identified as Rusten Sheskey, a white man who joined the force in 2013.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that its civil rights division would oversee a federal investigation into the shooting, which marks days of civil unrest.
Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said Wednesday he would wait for the results of that investigation before deciding whether or not to press Sheskey, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Speaking to NBC News, Harris, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, board member, criticized Republicans for not addressing such police shootings. In January, Rittenhouse was pictured attending a rally for President Trump.
“I have yet to see these people who are known to talk to national leaders about this problem of killing unarmed Black men, brown men, indigenous men in our country,” Harris said. “I still have to talk to them about it.”
Her remarks come after prosecutors filed murder charges against a 17-year-old guard, Kyle Rittenhouse, who was traveling from Illinois to Kenosha, where he shot and killed two people on Tuesday. A lawyer for Rittenhouse claims he acted in self-defense, a claim that the criminal complaint filed against him is contradicted by video.
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