You can almost say that the day the New York police officer took Eric Garner’s life unnecessarily with a vicious chokehold in Staten Island in 2014, he also squeezed out most of the life of his daughter Erica.
It just took until today for the female firebrand activist to slip physically to the precipice of death.
Erica Garner has been officially declared brain dead by hospital officials and given zero chance of recovery — five days after the mother of two suffered a massive heart attack, the New York Daily News has learned.
Family members have already been notified and are making their way to Woodhull Hospital on Thursday to say final goodbyes to Erica Garner, who became an outspoken critic of police brutality after her father’s brutal death in New York in 2014.
Garner, 27, had never come off of life support since Thursday morning, her mother Esaw Snipes said.
“She’s not gone, she’s brain dead,” Garner’s heartbroken mother explained. “Physically, she is still with us.”
Garner has been in a coma since Saturday, when her asthma attack triggered a heart attack.
The person running her popular Twitter account told Garner’s 35K followers Wednesday that a CAT scan revealed that she had suffered brain damage “from lack of oxygen while in cardiac arrest.”
The account also shot down an RIP message from Brooklyn city Councilman Jumaane Williams, who prematurely reported her death.
“As we sent prayers up…so sorry to hear the news. RIP @es_snipes. That family still needs us #Garner,” Williams tweeted.
No one of conscience will soon forget, if ever, the desperate pleas of “I can’t breathe!” as Eric Garner was put into a chokehold by Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo — a chokehold the NYPD had banned — and over a few loose cigarettes. This episode helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement and motivated Erica Garner to become a proponent of police reforms and judicial equity.
Despite employing a long-outlawed and illegal tactic to subdue a subject, Pantaleo was exonerated in a court of law and, in fact, recently received a raise.
When Erica Garner’s son was born in August, she named her newborn after her father.
The mother suffered her first heart attack shortly after the delivery, with doctors saying the pregnancy stressed her already enlarged heart.
