Erica Garner, 27, who emerged as a controversial activist after the death of her father, Eric Garner, has died, a week after suffering an apparent heart attack.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Erica Garner, 27, who emerged as a controversial activist after the death of her father, Eric Garner, has died, a week after suffering an apparent heart attack.
Garner died early Saturday morning at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, her official Twitter account confirmed.
When you report this you remember she was human: mother, daughter, sister, aunt. Her heart was bigger than the world. It really was. She cared when most people wouldn’t have. She was good. She only pursued right, no matter what. No one gave her justice.
The mother of two, who resided in Brooklyn, went into cardiac arrest Saturday night after suffering an asthma attack, her family has said in media interviews and on social media.
According to her Twitter account, which has been run by a worker since she was stricken, she “suffered major brain damage from a lack of oxygen while in cardiac arrest.”
The Daily News reports that Esaw Snipes, Garner’s mother, called her a warrior on Saturday and said “She left on her own terms.”
Garner emerged on the scene after her father died while he was being arrested at Victory Boulevard and Bay Street in Tompkinsville for allegedly selling loose cigarettes in 2014.
She was an outspoken and sometimes controversial activist against police brutality, organizing marches and speaking often to the media about her father’s case.
Garner, who has over 36.4K followers on Twitter, used the platform to voice her opinion on social injustice.
She recently received $163,600 as part of the city’s $5.9 million wrongful-death settlement with the family, according to distrubution records.
Days before the anniversary of her father’s death in 2015, she led a march through the streets of St. George and Tompkinsville, as part of a week-long series of events planned to honor his legacy and raise awareness of what she believed was a trend of police brutality in the country.
The group stopped traffic for a brief time, as they let out chants demanding justice in front of the state Supreme Court building. The march ended at the spot where her father died, and brought together several social activist organizations.
For a time in 2015, Garner considered challenging Rep. Daniel Donovan when he ran for re-election the following year. Donovan was the distict attorney when a grand jury declined to indict Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo in connection with her father’s death.
She ultimately decided against mounting a campaign, however.
In 2016, she met with President Obama after she took to Twitter to express her outrage that she was not given the opportunity to speak with the commander in chief at a town hall in the nation’s capital.
Garner accused ABC News of lying to her and her family about having an opportunity to ask the president a question in order to get them to Washington D. C., where the town hall was held, for ratings.
“Yo this town hall that presidential town hall #abc arranged is a farce. It was nothing short of full exploitation of Black pain and grief,” she tweeted.
Garner also lended her voice to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. She stood behind his social-justice platform and was featured in a campaign video.
“People are dying,” Garner said in the video. “This is real. We need a president that will talk about it. I believe Bernie Sanders is a protester. He’s not scared to go up against the criminal justice system. He is not scared.”
Among her survivors are two children, a daughter Alyssa and a four-month-old son, Eric; her mother, Esaw Snipes; and her siblings, Emerald Garner, Eric Snipes, Emery Snipes; and a half-sister, Legacy Garner-Miller.
