Dear BLM: The Cop’s Lawyer Says The Officer Opened Fire On Jacob Blake After Hearing Woman Yell, ‘He’s Got My Kids! He’s Got My Keys!’
Still waiting for all of the leftists out there to start wringing their hands and saying, “Will somebody, please, think of the children!”
Brendan Matthews, the attorney for Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey, is speaking out because he feels compelled to provide additional details in the Jacob Blake shooting incident in order to counter what he describes as an “incomplete” and “inaccurate” narrative that has emerged.
Matthews says that Officer Sheskey responded with force because Jacob Blake was armed with a knife and turned towards the officer before the shooting. In addition, the officer was concerned about the welfare of the child that he saw Blake put into the vehicle after a woman yelled that Blake had her keys and her kid.
“He’s got my kid. He’s got my keys,” Sheskey heard a woman say, according to attorney Brendan Matthews, who is representing the officer. If Sheskey had allowed Blake to drive away and something happened to the child “the question would have been ‘why didn’t you do something?’” Matthews said.
That explanation, provided in an exclusive interview with CNN, offers the most detailed rationale to date for Sheskey’s highly scrutinized decision to shoot Blake, who is Black, as he leaned into an SUV with his children inside it on August 23. Cellphone video of the shooting went viral on the internet, sparking days of protests and rioting in the lakeside city of Kenosha. The shooting, which Blake’s family has said resulted in paralysis from his waist down, was widely condemned as yet another unjustified shooting of a Black person by police.
Although there has been much media speculation about the knife found on the driver’s side floor of the vehicle that Blake was attempting to get into, Matthews asserts that Blake was armed with a knife and was turning towards Officer Sheskey before shots were fired.
At the time Sheskey opened fire, the lawyer said, Blake held a knife in his hand and twisted his body toward the officer. That action is not visible in the video widely circulating on the internet, in which the view of Blake’s body is partially obscured by the driver’s side door of the SUV.
Matthews said a second officer at the scene, whom he also represents, provided investigators with a similar account of Blake turning toward Sheskey with a knife in his hand immediately prior to the shooting. That officer said he too would have opened fire but did not have a clear angle, according to the lawyer.
The article chronicles the events of the day of the shooting where police, Blake’s family, and the woman claiming to be his fiancée have different versions of the incident.
One particular detail included in the article is that the man who shot the video said that he heard the officers tell Blake to “drop the knife” twice.
Raysean White, who shot video of the encounter, told CNN’s Erin Burnett he twice heard police tell Blake to “drop the knife,” but that he did not see a knife in Blake’s hand. White disputed other aspects of the police account, but said it was possible some things occurred before he began witnessing the incident unfold.
This wasn’t the first time that Jacob Blake had an encounter with Kenosha Police.
The police version of events leading up to the shooting bore some similarity to an encounter allegedly involving Blake at the same address three months earlier.
In that case, a woman who described Blake as her ex-boyfriend said he took her car and debit card without her permission and made $1,000 in fraudulent withdrawals, according to court records. She told police at the time that Blake did not have a car and that he would not tell her where he was living, the court records state.
Blake was not charged with taking the car or money, but was charged with sexual assault and other offenses in connection with the incident. He was wanted in connection with those charges at the time of the shooting. Sheskey was aware that Blake was wanted, Matthews said, but did not know the details of the past incident prior to the shooting. Blake entered a not guilty plea to those charges earlier this month.
Source: Channel 3000 (Emphasis added)
Here is the police scanner audio after the 911 call was made by a woman who said that her “ex-boyfriend” was at her home and he shouldn’t be there.
There are some long pauses, but at around the 2:15 mark, one officer says that the woman making the complaint is being “uncooperative” and not giving complete information to police.
https://youtu.be/6nJvE_oDHR0
The woman that filed the police report claiming that Jacob Blake had broken into her home and sexually assaulted her in May was identified as “LNB.”
You can read the details of the complaint here:
Here is Jacob Blake’s “fiancée” Laquisha N. Booker saying that she was yelling at police that her kids were in the car.
Funny how she’s gone from an 8-year on-again-off-again relationship to his fiancée now that he has over $2 million in a GoFundMe account and a race-baiting ambulance-chaser for a lawyer who is making a name for himself with these cases, eh? It’s just a wacky coincidence, I’m sure.
Margot Cleveland over at The Federalist noted on August 31 that the presence of the children in the vehicle is even more justification for the use of force.
Police attempted to Tase Blake—twice. They attempted to physically restrain Blake. Those efforts failed as well. There was but a split-second left to keep Blake from getting behind the wheel and escaping with the three children, while possibly armed. Shooting Blake was the only option left to ensure the children’s safety…
…While the officers did not know those facts at the time of their encounter with Blake, they knew enough to make them reasonably fear for the children’s safety (as well as their own), making the use of deadly force appropriate in this case. Yes, Blake remains hospitalized in critical condition, but better him than the three innocent children. Those black lives matter too.
Source: The Federalist
Just imagine the outrage if the officers allowed Jacob Blake to drive off with three children after a woman was yelling, “He’s got my keys! He’s got my kid!”
This is why we can’t rush to judgment either way in these cases. Sometimes it takes time for the facts to come out. This is especially true when we have an activist media that is desperate to push a narrative rather than report the facts.
