Blake’s defense attorney, Paul D’Emilia, gave a radically different account of his client’s actions that day to Straus News. “He was attempting to help [Reynolds], actually. She was struggling on the steps, and he was helping her down the steps,” D’Emilia claims.
He further argued that the public only got a “partial” portrait of the incident from the video, and that Reynolds was the one that had “turned on” Blake. In fact, D’Emila claims that the cane belonged to Blake, and that he was the actual victim of its theft and its use as a weapon. “My client is disabled,” D’Emilia offered, while also insinuating that Reynolds had unverifiable struggles with mental illness and substance abuse that had made her violent.
D’Emilia clarified that Blake had confessed to suffering from mental illness himself, and that “he definitely needs medication and some care.”