An image taken from a video shows Mr. Blake walking away from police as officers attempt to restrain him.
Photo: Raysean White/TMX.newsVideo that went viral Sunday showed Jacob Blake, a Black man who lives in Kenosha, Wis., was shot multiple times in the back by police. In the video, Mr. Blake is walking away from several officers with weapons drawn as bystanders yell in the background.
Mr. Blake walks around a gray SUV, opens a door of the vehicle and leans inside when an officer grabs the tank top he is wearing and shoots him from behind. It isn’t clear from the video how many officers fired on Mr. Blake, as several have their weapons drawn. An officer can be heard screaming, “drop the knife,” but it isn’t clear from the video if Mr. Blake is holding anything. The shooting spurred protests and violence in Kenosha that evening that continued Tuesday night.
Kenosha police said early Wednesday that they had responded to a report of gunshots just before midnight during a third night of protests and violence. Authorities said two people were killed, and a third gunshot victim was taken to the hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening wounds. Police said the investigation was continuing, but didn’t provide further details.
What led up to the shooting of Jacob Blake?
On Sunday evening, Kenosha police were called to Mr. Blake’s home after a caller said that he had taken some keys and was refusing to give them back, according to 911 radio traffic captured by Broadcastify. Ben Crump, the attorney representing Mr. Blake’s family, has said Mr. Blake was helping to de-escalate the situation when officers initially used a stun gun on him, and that Mr. Blake was walking away from police to check on his children, who were in the car, when he was shot.
The Kenosha Police Department has said little about what led up to the shooting, releasing a statement Monday saying officers responded to a domestic incident around 5:11 p.m. and “provided immediate aid” to the man after they shot him. “Kenosha Sheriff’s Department and Wisconsin State Patrol were requested immediately so that the scene could be turned over to an agency, other than Kenosha Police,” the police department said. The police department hasn’t commented on the incident since.
Who is Jacob Blake?
Mr. Blake, 29 years old, lives in Kenosha. According to the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Blake grew up in Evanston, Ill., and is the grandson of an Evanston civil-rights activist and preacher.
There was a warrant for his arrest filed in Wisconsin Circuit Court in July on charges of criminal trespass, domestic abuse and third-degree sexual assault. Mr. Crump, the attorney, didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Blake’s record.
What is Jacob Blake’s condition?
Mr. Crump said Tuesday in a tweet that Mr. Blake was “currently paralyzed from the waist down. Praying it’s not permanent.” Mr. Crump on Monday said Mr. Blake was stable but still in the intensive care unit at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee.
What has happened in Kenosha since Mr. Blake’s shooting?
The city has been beset by protests, much of it violent. Government buildings and businesses have been damaged, burned and looted. The most violent incident at a protest took place late Tuesday night, where two people were killed and one was injured, according to local police. In a video cleared by Storyful from the protest late Tuesday night, what sound like gunshots can be heard as people yell and a male wearing an olive-green shirt and backward cap appears to shoot people after being chased by members in the crowd. The man in the olive-green shirt then walks with his hands up toward a police car, as people can be heard screaming in the background, “he just shot someone.”
Where is Kenosha, and what is it like?
Kenosha, with a population of around 100,000, is a former manufacturing hub in the southeast corner of Wisconsin that sits on Lake Michigan and is near the state’s border with Illinois. Kenosha County has seen several years with only a handful of homicides, county data show.
Kenosha once leaned heavily Democratic, but its politics today are split roughly down the middle. The city voted to elect Donald Trump president in 2016 by a slim margin.
The city also has stark racial disparities. Kenosha County is about 87% white and less than 8% Black, according to census data. A third of the county’s Black citizens are living below the poverty line, and over 40% of working-age Black men aren’t employed, according to an analysis of government data by Marc Levine, founding director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In Kenosha, the incarceration rate for Black people is 12 times that of white people, according to Mr. Levine.
Write to Shayndi Raice at shayndi.raice@wsj.com
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