Jacob Blake has filed an excessive force lawsuit against the Kenosha police officer who shot him
Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man who was shot seven times by a White police officer who was responding to a domestic incident on August 23, 2020, has sued the officer for excessive force in federal court, records show.
The lawsuit, which only names Kenosha, Wisconsin, Officer Rusten Sheskey as a defendant, argues that the shooting “was undertaken with malice, willfulness, and reckless indifference to the rights” of Blake.
Blake survived the shooting but was left paralyzed from the waist down. The lawsuit notes that Blake “has suffered and will continue to suffer physical and emotional damages.”
CNN has reached out to Sheskey and the Kenosha Police Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.
The suit asks for damages “in a fair and just amount sufficient to compensate [Blake] for the injuries he has suffered, plus a substantial sum in punitive damages.”
Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced in January that neither Sheskey nor the other two officers would be criminally charged for their actions. Blake was not charged in the incident either.
CNN reported that Sheskey told investigators shortly after the incident that he used deadly force during the chaotic encounter because he was afraid Blake, while attempting to flee the scene, was trying to kidnap a child in the backseat of the vehicle he was driving.
