Activist Erica Garner Is Dead At 27

Activist Erica Garner has died at age 27, her family confirmed on social media today. Garner, who spoke out against police brutality following the highly publicised 2014 death of her father, Eric, had been on life support in a Brooklyn hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest last week, NBC News reports.

"She passed away this morning," a tweet from Garner's official Twitter account informed her followers. "The reports are real. We didn't deserve her."

Subsequent tweets noted that Garner never received justice following the death of her 43-year-old father. A grand jury declined to bring charges against the NYPD officer who held the asthmatic father of six in a chokehold while he pleaded "I can't breathe," though his death was ruled a homicide. The case became one of the most prominent and controversial examples of police brutality and prompted Erica Garner to take up a new role as an activist who staged "die-ins" and campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries.

Like her father, Garner also suffered from asthma, members of her family told the New York Daily News; she also had an enlarged heart. She reportedly had a heart attack shortly after giving birth to a son, whom she named after her late father, in August. An asthma attack triggered a second, and ultimately fatal, heart attack on 23rd December.

“She was a warrior, she was a fighter, and we didn’t pull the plug on her,” her mother, Esaw Snipes, told reporters. “She left on her own terms.”

"When you report this you remember she was human: mother, daughter, sister, aunt," her family tweeted. "Her heart was bigger than the world. 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."