Erica Garner, Daughter of NY choking victim Eric Garner, In Critical Condition After Suffering Heart Attack

Erica Garner 27 years old suffered a heart attack (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Story by The Root
Written by Kirsten West Savali

Erica Garner, 27, daughter of Eric Garner—the 43-year-old Staten Island N.Y. man who was killed in 2014 when NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo restrained him with an illegal chokehold—is in a coma after suffering a heart attack on Christmas Eve.

Emerald Snipes shared her sister’s condition on Facebook:

Erica, a mother of two, is reportedly unable to breath on her own, the NY Daily News reports.

Esaw Snipes-Garner, Erica’s mother and Eric Garner’s widow, said her daughter’s heart attack was brought on by a severe asthma attack. This is the second heart attack that the 27-year-old activist has suffered; the first one occurred after she gave birth in August to her son Eric, named after her father.

It was then that doctors discovered that Erica had an enlarged heart.

“[She] is still with us,” Snipes-Garner told the News. “She’s fighting. The doctor says she has a strong heart.”

Someone who identified themselves as one of Erica’s workers tweeted from her official Twitter account and asked followers for prayers.

Erica became a fierce oppositional force against state-sanctioned violence after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed her 43-year-old father on July 17, 2014 by placing him in an illegal chokehold.

A few months after her father’s lynching at the hands of the NYPD, Erica staged a “die-in” on the same Staten Island N.Y. corner where Eric Garner took his last breath.

“I can’t breathe,” Eric Garner’s last words, became a rallying cry for a movement that would intensify even more just three weeks later in the wake of Michael Brown’s extrajudicial killing in Ferguson.

When NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, citing an archaic law, refused to release Panteleo’s disciplinary record, Erica blasted him on social media, making it clear that having a black wife and black children does not mean that de Blasio has genuine love for the black citizens he claims to serve.

In December, 2014, a grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo, who had a history of violently targeting black men.

Kenneth Smith and Rylawn Walker both filed lawsuits against Pantaleo in federal court claiming that not only did Pantaleo lie about the men being in possession on marijuana—charges that were later dropped—he also subjected them “to a degrading search of his private parts and genitals,” according to the lawsuits.

Since Erica Garner first stepped on the frontline seeking justice for her father, she has also been vocal on the war on drugs and has heavily criticized the Democratic Party for their apathetic so-called pragmatism in the face of rampant police brutality and systemic oppression in occupied communities.

She is a warrior making her father, her family, and her community proud.

Our thoughts are with Erica and the entire Snipes-Garner family as we await news on her condition.