When Jacob Blake was partially paralyzed last year, it set off civil unrest in Kenosha, Wis. Jurors are now deliberating the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two men during those protests.
As a jury of 12 Kenosha County residents weighed the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two men and wounded a third amid unrest last summer, Jacob Blake, the man who was partially paralyzed in the police shooting that ignited the protests, was miles away in Chicago, where he undergoes physical therapy in an effort to walk again. Mr. Blake,30, has set a goal of walking on his own by next summer, said his uncle, Justin Blake, who has remained on the steps outside the courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., during much of Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial. “He has bad days, there’s no doubt, but he’s so grateful to be alive,” Justin Blake said of Jacob Blake, who, his uncle said, has not been following every turn in the Rittenhouse trial and instead has kept his attention on healing and a new side job, printing T-shirts. “He needs to be focusing on himself, focusing on his children and his new normal,” Justin Blake said. In August 2020, Jacob Blake was training to become a mechanic and living in Kenosha when a woman with whom he has several children called 911 and said he was about to drive away in her rental car. In minutes, Kenosha police officers arrived at the woman’s home. Mr. Blake, who is Black, appeared to be trying to enter the car and had a knife in one hand when Rusten Sheskey, a white officer, shot him seven times. Several of Mr. Blake’s children were in the back seat of the car. The police shooting, which was captured on a bystander video, came during a summer of anger and demonstrations across the country over police violence following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Protests erupted in Kenosha, too, but attention quickly shifted from the shooting of Mr.
