Families Of George Floyd, Jacob Blake, & Eric Garner Form A Bond Through Their Trauma

The family members of George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and Eric Garner said that they have developed a bond through their traumatic experience.

All three families, jointly, interviewed with Dateline’s Craig Melvin, airing on NBC Thursday night. They expressed their frustration with the system’s inability to charge the men who killed or paralyzed their sons.

The three families said they find comfort in each other and other families who have gone through the same thing.

Gwen Carr, Eric Garner’s mom, said, “It’s a kind of unity. We all have a certain bond now because we know what it is to lose a loved one or to get a loved one so severely injured that it takes a part of us.”

Jacob Blake Sr. added, “It’s so easy to look at each one of these people here and know they get it, man. They get it. Because you never asked to be in this situation. But for somebody else’s racism, we’re in this situation because we are not looked at like humans.”

Thursday night’s Dateline will also include interviews with key experts and lawmakers on the need for major police reforms and what they think should be done about police violence against Black Americans in the United States.

George Floyd was killed by a knee to the neck, for nearly nine minutes, from officer Derek Chauvin.

Jacob Blake was paralyzed by several shots to his back, in front of his three children, by officer Rusten Sheskey.

Eric Garner was killed by a choke hold from officer Daniel Pantaleo.

None of the three officers was charged with a crime, but they all took a life or altered a life.

The Dateline episode will premiere Thursday night (Jan. 7) at 10 p.m.