The lawyer for a Kenosha, Wis., police officer who shot Jacob Blake claimed the officer thought Blake was armed and involved in a kidnapping situation.
Blake, who is Black, was shot seven times in the back as he opened his car door by the officer, who had been following him to the car. The officers had come to the scene because of a reported domestic disturbance.
Blake’s shooting set off a series of protests over racial injustice and police practices that had already come under intense scrutiny after other shootings of minority victims.
Blake, who survived the shooting, is currently hospitalized and paralyzed, according to family members who have said that he was unarmed and attempting to break up a fight between two women at the time he was shot.
Speaking with CNN, an attorney for the officer, Rusten Sheskey, said that Sheskey fired seven shots that struck Blake because Sheskey believed Blake to be attempting to leave the scene with a child that was not in his care in the back seat of his car.
The attorney said other people at the scene were exclaiming, “He’s got my kid. He’s got my keys.”
“The question would have been ‘Why didn’t you do something?'” had Blake left the scene, Sheskey’s lawyer claimed Monday.
Sheskey’s attorney added that he and another police officer at the scene had spotted a knife in Blake’s hand and claimed that Blake was turning toward officers at the time of his shooting, which cannot be seen on video. The alleged movement by Blake led Sheskey to believe his life was in danger, according to the attorney.
“He didn’t go to work wanting to shoot anybody. He went to work trying to help people. That’s what he does every day,” the attorney, Brendan Matthews, told CNN. “He absolutely did not want this to happen.”
His comments come despite findings from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, which stated that Sheskey fired his service weapon seven times “towards Mr. Blake’s back.”