Jacob Blake admitted during his one-on-one interview with ABC News' "Good Morning America" that he was armed with a knife at the time he was shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha Police Department officer in August. Videos from the shooting sparked several days of riots that resulted in millions of dollars of damage and multiple shootings.
GMA's Michael Strahan asked Blake what was going through his head while he was fighting with the police, including removing taser prongs, and walking towards his car.
"I’m rattled, you know. I realize I had dropped my knife. I had a little pocket knife. So I picked it up after I got off of him because they tased me and I fell on top of him," Blake said.
Strahan asked what Blake's plan was once he got to the car.
"I’m not really worried, I’m walking away from them so it’s not like they’re going to shoot me. I shouldn’t have picked it up, only considering what was going on. At that time I wasn’t thinking clearly...Throw myself to the ground and, you know, put my arms behind my back. Because if they did it there and killed me there everybody would see it," Blake said.
“You said we can just look at the video and the video tells everything. There’s going to be a lot of people who look at the video and say, in the video, you’re walking away from the police. So why didn’t he just stop and do what the police are asking him to do?" Strahan asked.
"I couldn’t hear that. All I heard was screaming, screaming, my ears was ringing so it was all muffled," Blake explained.
Police were called because Blake had an active warrant out for his arrest at the time of the shooting for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman he knew, along with stealing her vehicle. The Kenosha County DA recently announced their investigation found no charges could be made against Officer Rusten Sheskey.
Despite having no evidence Blake was unarmed, news outlets and social media users made the claim shortly after the shooting, which undoubtedly added to the initial outrage.
People in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, have been ordered to stay inside under a curfew starting at 8 p.m. CT tonight following the police shooting of unarmed Black man Jacob Blake https://t.co/JQhAKOWM7m pic.twitter.com/tsTTRl5LNZ
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) August 24, 2020
‘They shot my son se…seven time…seven times, like he didn’t matter. But my son matters’: Jacob Blake Sr., the father of the unarmed Black man shot by police spoke at a conference at the Kenosha County Courthouse https://t.co/dgCQDccKFz pic.twitter.com/0781qJSDt8
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 25, 2020
Joe Biden responds to the shooting of Jacob Blake, the unarmed Black man shot in the back by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., over the weekend.
— POLITICO (@politico) August 26, 2020
"What i saw in that video makes me sick," Biden said. pic.twitter.com/ZI4HkotNTX
In households across this nation Black families are having talks with their kids about why yet another unarmed Black man #JacobBlake was shot by police!
— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) August 27, 2020
Then on #RNC2020 these delusional chipper people are talking about how great the times are!
There are clearly two America’s!
Townhall was on the ground in Kenosha covering the protests and riots in the days after the shooting. The chaos was eventually brought under control, but not before multiple shootings took place, which resulted in the deaths of two people.