By Taiwo Okanlawon

Jacob Blake, the African-American shot in the back at close range by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has spoken from his hospital bed.

Blake, 29, in a video message released on Saturday by his lawyer Ben Crump, said: “It hurts to breathe,” and that he is in constant pain.

The young back man was shot seven times in the back point-blank over the weekend by a white police officer in Kenosha.

“There’s a lot more life to live,” Blake stated despite his injuries, which will likely leave him paralysed from the waist down.

“Your life, and not only just your life, your legs – something that you need to move around and forward in life – can be taken from you like this, man,” Blake said, snapping his fingers.

Wearing a hospital gown, Blake said he had staples in his back and stomach. “Twenty-four hours, every 24 hours it’s pain, it’s nothing but pain,” he said.

“It hurts to breathe, it hurts to sleep, it hurts to move from side-to-side, it hurts to eat,” he said in the video, which has more than 400,000 views on Twitter so far.

“Please, I’m telling you, change your lives out there. We can stick together, make some money, make everything easier for our people out there, man, because there’s so much time that’s been wasted.”