Jacob Blake has dropped his federal civil rights lawsuit against the Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer who shot him during a domestic disturbance and left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Attorneys for Blake, whose August 2020 shooting sparked the protests in which Kyle Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and wounded a third, and for Kenosha police Officer Rusten Sheskey didn’t say in their court filings why the lawsuit was dropped. Nor did they say whether an out-of-court financial settlement had been reached.
A man who answered the phone at the office of Patrick Salvi II, Blake’s lawyer, hung up when asked about the decision to drop the suit. Sheskey’s attorney Kenneth Battle didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
Authorities have said that Sheskey, who is white, shot Blake, who is Black, after Blake resisted arrest during the disturbance and appeared to turn toward Sheskey with a knife. Blake was wanted on a felony sexual assault warrant at the time.
Prosecutors cleared Sheskey of any criminal wrongdoing and later dropped the sexual assault case against Blake as part of a plea deal.
Blake filed the civil rights lawsuit in March 2021, saying Sheskey used excessive force on him.
Court records show the lawyers for the two men filed a notice Friday that they had agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice — which means Blake can’t refile it. On Monday, U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller dismissed the case.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 and living in nearby Antioch when he shot the three protesters, was acquitted in November of all of the charges he’d faced.
