Rayshard Brooks celebrated his 8-year-old daughter's birthday hours before he was shot dead by Atlanta police

• Rayshard Brooks took his 8-year-old daughter, Blessing, to the arcade to celebrate her birthday in the hours before his death in Atlanta on Friday.
• The 27-year-old Black man was shot dead by an Atlanta police officer as he tried to flee a drunken-driving arrest. The officer has since been fired.
• Brooks' wife, Tomika Miller, said the police "destroyed my family."

Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was shot dead by an Atlanta police officer on Friday, celebrated his 8-year-old daughter's birthday hours before his death.

According to CNN, Brooks, 27, took his eldest daughter, Blessing, to get her nails done and eat on Friday, the day before her birthday. He also took her to an arcade that day.

Hours later, at about 10:30 p.m., the police were called to a Wendy's near downtown Atlanta when someone reported a man being asleep at the wheel in the drive-thru line.

One police officer had Brooks pull over into a parking spot, and another officer eventually joined. Brooks failed a Breathalyzer test, and when two officers tried to take him into custody on suspicion of drunken driving, he scuffled with the officers, grabbed one of their Tasers, and tried to flee on foot.

He was then shot twice in the back, and he died from his injuries in a hospital hours later. Body-camera and dashboard-camera footage showed the scuffle before the fatal shots.

A Brooks family attorney said Blessing had put on a special birthday dress Saturday morning, waiting for her father to come home and take her skating, not knowing that he would never arrive.

"We sat with [Brooks' children] today and watched them play and laugh and be oblivious to the facts that their dad was murdered on camera," the attorney, L. Chris Stewart, said at a news conference.

Brooks' widow, Tomika Miller, told WSB-TV that the police had "destroyed her family."

She called her late husband a "great father" who "loved his family" and said she wished the officers "could have had sympathy or compassion" for him.

"I just feel like they didn't have to be so aggressive," she said.

"I feel like I'm stuck being a single black parent," she added. "I'm being forced to do it by myself.

"This was not a choice. They took my husband away. They destroyed my family. No justice will ever get that back. This is another black family being broken."

One officer involved in Brooks' arrest has been fired, and another placed on administrative duty. Atlanta's police chief has also resigned.

The Fulton County district attorney said he would decide whether to file charges by the middle of this week.

According to a GoFundMe fundraiser for the Brooks family's legal team, in addition to Blessing he had two other daughters — Memory, 2, and Dream, 1 — as well as a 13-year-old stepson, Mekai. As of Monday morning, that campaign had raised more than $63,000.

Brooks' death set off a new wave of protests in Atlanta, which had already seen weeks of anti-police-brutality demonstrations after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

• Read more:
• The Atlanta police website went down after the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks. The hacktivist group Anonymous claimed responsibility.
• Police have released body-cam footage showing the struggle before the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks by the Atlanta police
• The Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks has been fired, and a 2nd officer is on administrative leave
• Medical examiner says Rayshard Brooks died from gunshot wounds to the back and his death has been labeled a homicide