Erica Garner, the eldest daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, died in Brooklyn on Saturday morning, The New York Daily News reported. She was 27.
Erica Garner suffered a massive heart attack last week. On Friday the Daily News reported that Garner had been declared brain dead and was on life support.
Garner was an outspoken critic of police brutality after her father died.
In July 2014, police attempted to arrest Eric Garner for allegedly selling cigarrettes illegally in Staten Island, CNN reported. Video of the incident showed New York Police officer Daniel Pantaleo tackling Garner from behind and taking him to the ground using a department-banned chokehold.
Eric Garner’s pleas of “I can’t breathe!” sparked outrage, his daughter’s advocacy and pushed the Black Lives Matter movement, forward, the Daily News reported.
Eric Garner’s death was ruled a homicide, but a grand jury decided not to indict Pantaleo on criminal charges. The city of New York settled with Eric Garner’s estate for $5.9 million in July 2015, CNN reported.
Erica Garner’s official Twitter account confirmed her death Saturday morning, noting that “the reports are real,” and “we didn’t deserve her.”
The person running her Twitter account then told her more than 38,000 followers to “remember she was human: mother, daughter, sister, aunt. Her heart was bigger than the world. It really really was.”
When her son was born in August, Erica Garner named him after her father. She suffered her first heart attack shortly after the baby’s birth, with doctors saying the pregnancy stressed her already enlarged heart, the Daily News reported.
She had been in a coma since Dec. 23, when an asthma attack led to a second heart attack, the Daily News reported.
Credit: Andrew Burton
Credit: Andrew Burton
In 2014, Erica Garner told CNN in 2014 that her father’s death made more to do with police misconduct than with race.
"I can't really say it's a black and white issue," she said. "It's about the police officer and abusing their power."
Saturday morning, Rev. Al Sharpton called Erica Garner a "warrior to the end."
"Many will say that Erica died of a heart attack, but that's only partially true because her heart was already broken when she couldn't get justice for her father," Shartpon said. "Whatever the asthma and the others attacked was a piece of the heart left. Her heart was attacked by a system that would choke her dad and not hold accountable those that did it."
Others also came forward to share their condolences, including New York mayor Bill de Blasio, whose comments were met with a question from Garner's Twitter account.
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