Criminal justice reform activist Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner, dies at 27
Criminal justice reform advocate Erica Garner died Saturday, leaving behind two young children. She was 27.
Garner became a civil rights activist following the 2014 killing of her father, Eric Garner, at the hands of New York City police officers. His chokehold death was caught on camera, and his desperate plea of "I can't breathe" became a rallying cry against police brutality.
Erica Garner suffered two heart attacks this fall, the second of which left her in a medically induced coma on Christmas Eve. Her family confirmed her death in a series of posts on her Twitter account:
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"She was a warrior. She was a fighter, and we didn't pull the plug on her," said Erica's mother, Esaw Snipes. "She left on her own terms."
The officer responsible for Eric Garner's death was never indicted, though the death was ruled a homicide and the Garner family won a civil settlement. Read The Week's Sarah Lustbader on six reforms that could help prevent such tragedies in the future.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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