(YAHOO) – The Wisconsin Justice Department revealed Wednesday that Jacob Blake had admitted to investigators that “he had a knife in his possession” when he was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha police on Sunday.
Investigators found a knife on the “driver’s side floorboard of Mr. Blake’s vehicle,” the DOJ release states. The DOJ also named the officer who shot Blake as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the force. The DOJ’s release said that, before Sheskey shot Blake, officers had “deployed a taser to attempt to stop Mr. Blake, however the taser was not successful.”
There was no body-camera footage captured by the officers, although Kenosha city leaders unanimously approved a plan in 2017 to acquire the devices for law enforcement.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the Blake family, said Tuesday that Blake was “helping to deescalate a domestic incident” when confronted by the officers. But the DOJ release says officers were dispatched to the address “after a female caller reported that her boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises.”
