Jacob Blake released from hospital, enters rehab center

Jacob Blake has been released from the hospital, well over a month after he was shot seven times in the back at point-blank range by Kenosha, Wis., police.

Blake attorney Patrick Cafferty told CNN that the 29-year-old had been transferred to “a spinal injury rehabilitation center in Chicago” but declined to give additional details as to how long Blake is expected be at the rehab facility.

On Aug. 23, Blake was critically wounded after being shot by police as he attempted to enter his car to join his three children.

Police had initially been called to the scene over a reported domestic incident. Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who has helped represent the Blake family in the aftermath of the shooting, has said that Blake, who is Black, was trying to break up a fight between two women.

Cellphone footage shows Blake briefly struggling with two police officers before disengaging and attempting to get into his vehicle, before being shot in the back by a Kenosha police officer, who is white.

Blake was paralyzed from the shooting and Crump has said it would take a “miracle” for him to walk again.

The shooting inflamed already precarious racial tensions in the U.S. that were aggravated by the police shootings of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, and George Floyd, a Black man.

Nationwide protests demanding the end to police brutality and systemic racism followed Taylor’s and Floyd’s deaths, spearheaded by a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement.