US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has spoken over the phone with Jacob Blake, the black man who was shot in the back seven times by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, sparking big protests.
Mr Blake, who remains in hospital paralysed, said “he was not going to give up” whether he walked again or not“, Mr Biden said.
He was speaking at a church meeting in the city where the shooting took place.
Joe Biden also met the family of Jacob Blake, who’s shooting sparked days of sometimes violent protests.
The Democratic presidential nominee spent more than an hour in private with Mr Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr, his siblings and one of his lawyers, B’Ivory LaMarr in Milwaukee.
Joe Biden’s visit came two days after Donald Trump did the same – but the president did not meet Mr Blake’s family.
Mr Trump used his visit to back law enforcement as he blamed “domestic terror” for the “destruction” in Kenosha.
With a campaign message of “law and order” he visited areas damaged in protests and promised nearly $4m (£3m) to help damaged businesses and $1m (£740,000) for city law enforcement.
A few hundred pro and anti-Trump protesters gathered in Kenosha during his visit.
As Mr Biden arrived in the city on, Kenosha was calm, with a handful of his supporters, some Black Lives Matter activists and a lone Trump supporter gathering.
The Democrat’s visit was intended to draw sharp contrasts with the president, building on his argument that he is a unifying figure, able to lead the nation through a racial division, the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, said he had asked both candidates not to visit.
Mr Biden met community leaders after talking to the Blake family, and told a church congregation the turmoil their city has experienced can be part of an awakening that helps the US confront centuries of discord.
“We’re finally now getting to the point where we’re going to be addressing the original sin of this country, 400 years old, slavery and all the vestiges of it,” he told Grace Lutheran Church.
“I can’t say if tomorrow God made me president, I can’t guarantee you everything gets solved in four years.”
But “it would be a whole better, we’d get a whole lot further down the road” if Trump is not re-elected, he added.
Some Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha had said in recent days they had been disappointed that a senior Democrat had not come sooner and that the president got here first.
Local Democrats had already been frustrated that after the party’s national convention in neighbouring Milwaukee had been cancelled because of the pandemic, no socially distant events were planned there as a replacement.
President Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, said Mr Biden’s visit to Kenosha was inappropriate and Mr Trump went because he is president but Mr Biden is only “injecting politics into a really serious situation that president helped solve
Wisconsin is an important state in the upcoming presidential election. Mr Trump narrowly won it in 2016, and for decades the state has backed the eventual winner of the presidency whether Republican or Democrat.
