Kenosha shooting: did Jacob Blake have a gun or a knife or was he unarmed?
There are multiple reports claiming that Jacob Blake had a weapon at the time of the shooting or was reaching for one but the man who recorded the video says he did not.
Jacob Blake shooting, live updates: reactions and breaking news in Kenosha.
A second wave of protests have been sparked in several states in the US over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, coming several weeks after a first wave of protests in the summer of 2020 following the killing of George Floyd.
Blake was taken to hospital in a critical condition after being shot eight times, and has been left paralyzed from the waist down as a result, as was confirmed by the Blake family attorney, Benjamin Crump.
And while police officers were apparently not wearing body-cams at the time of the shooting, the incident was captured by an onlooker, whose cellphone-recorded footage has gone viral.
Was Blake in possession of a weapon?
As seen from the footage, Jacob Blake was leaning into his SUV while three of his children were inside the vehicle. Ray, the man who recorded the footage, said that he decided to record after several women started arguing.
After Jacob Blake witnessed this argument, “he pulled up in his truck and told his son to get in the car. Like he didn’t want nothing to do with the drama,’ Ray told Fox6 News.
Ray said that he had to step away to use the bathroom and when he came back three officers were wrestling with Blake and he told Fox6 News that he heard the officers yelling “drop the knife when I was recording, and looking, I didn’t see a knife. I was looking at his hands when they said ‘Drop the knife,’ I didn’t see one.”