Trump to visit city of shooting victim

US President to visit city where Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a white policeman, sparking riots.

Donald Trump is preparing to visit the Midwestern city where African-American Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a white policeman, sparking a nationwide wave of protest.

The US President will meet police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) and “survey damage from recent riots” triggered by Mr Blake’s shooting last weekend.

Mr Blake was shot in front of his small children as he tried to get into a car, in an incident that has prompted an outpouring of anger over another shooting of a black man by police.

White House spokesman Judd Deere did not say if Mr Trump would meet the family of Mr Blake, who was left paralysed from the waist down.

His lawyer maintains that he was unarmed when he was shot. Police say they found a knife in his car afterwards.

Mr Blake’s family complained at the weekend about the 29-year-old being shackled to his hospital bed. They said they could not understand why he was chained to his hospital bed in Milwaukee.

“Why do they have that cold steel on my son’s ankle?” his ­father Jacob Blake Sr asked in an interview with CNN. “He couldn’t get up if he wanted to.”

The father said his son was heavily medicated and fighting for his life. He said his son had asked him: “Why did they shoot me so many times?”

Mr Blake suffered injuries to his spinal cord, stomach, kidney, liver, colon and intestine.

Family lawyer Ben Crump said there was “no explanation” for his client being shackled, other than that it followed a “pattern of deliberate indifference and excessive force”.

Tony Evers, 68, the governor of Wisconsin, said he “couldn’t imagine” why Mr Blake, a security guard and community volunteer, was being restrained that way in hospital. “I would hope that we would be able to find … a better way to help him,” he said. “It seems to be bad medicine.”

The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said all hospitalised ­patients in police custody were ­restrained unless undergoing medical procedures.

A warrant for Mr Blake’s ­arrest on charges of criminal trespass, domestic abuse and third-degree sexual assault was filed last month, stemming from a domestic case in May.

Police dispatch audio suggests that the officers who responded to the callout to Mr Blake’s home last Sunday knew there was an alert for a wanted person at that address. Rusten Sheskey, the policeman who shot him, has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Kenosha, about an hour’s drive from Chicago, was hammered by three nights of violence last week after the Blake shooting as protesters set fire to buildings and cars.

On Friday tens of thousands of protesters thronged Washington for a mass march marking the ­anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s historic “I have a dream” speech on August 28, 1963.

Often fighting back tears, relatives of George Floyd, Mr Blake and Breonna Taylor — a black 26-year-old shot dead by police in her apartment last March — took turns addressing the sea of ­people, who repeatedly called out the victims’ names in response.

“Black America, I hold you ­accountable,” said Mr Blake’s sister Letetra Widman. “You must stand, you must fight, but not with violence and chaos. With self love.”

AFP, THE TIMES