After several days in a coma from severe brain damage, Erica Garner – activist, and the daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner – has died at age 27.
Erica Garner’s mother, Esaw Snipes, used her Twitter account @es_snipes to announce on Saturday (Dec. 30) that her daughter had passed away.
“When you report this you remember she was human: mother, daughter, sister, aunt. Her heart was bigger than the world,” the account tweeted. “It really really was. She cared when most people wouldn’t have. She was good. She only pursued right, no matter what. No one gave her justice.”
Erica Garner had a heart attack triggered by an asthma attack on Saturday, Dec. 23. CNN reports that Snipes said Garner had an enlarged heart after giving birth to her son three weeks ago.
She had named her newborn son Eric, after her father Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in 2014 after police officer Daniel Pantaleo put him into a chokehold. Pantaleo and other officers were arresting Garner under suspicion of him illegally selling cigarettes. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide due, in part, to the chokehold – and despite the NYPD policy prohibiting the use of such chokeholds, officer Daniel Pantaleo was not indicted. The Garner family won $5.9 million in an out-of-court settlement with the City of New York.
Video of the incident spurred nationwide protests against police brutality, with Garner’s cry of “I can’t breathe” becoming a refrain of the Black Lives Matter movement. And Erica Garner herself became an activist, leading protests in her father’s honor.
Snipes asked supporters of Erica Garner to not donate any money to fundraising accounts that weren’t shared by @es_snipes, and for media outlets to only request comment from black journalists. She also encouraged users to retweet photos and videos of her daughter.
Watch a video of Erica Garner being interviewed at The Breakfast Club above, and watch below for a retired police officer’s examination of the chokehold that killed Eric Garner.