Stevante Clark hospitalized after heart attack: ‘I’ve never stopped fighting for Stephon’
Stevante Clark, the older brother of Stephon Clark, was hospitalized late Wednesday after he suffered a “mild heart attack,” he said from his hospital bed Thursday.
Clark, 30, said that he fainted, suffered a concussion, and had an irregular rapid heart rate. In an interview with The Sacramento Bee, he said he was told he has the heart of a 60-year-old.
“I honestly don’t believe you’re doing the work correctly if you don’t end up in the hospital if you don’t have heart issues,” Clark said in the phone call.
Clark became an outspoken advocate for his family in the aftermath of his brother’s death, who was shot by Sacramento police who mistook his cellphone for a gun in March 2018. In the months after the shooting, Clark gained notoriety for standing on the dais at a Sacramento City Council meeting, appearing on national news broadcasts and working alongside civil rights advocates such as Al Sharpton.
Since the conclusion of his brother’s case — in which the the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office and state Attorney General’s Office concluded the officers acted lawfully under the circumstances — Clark has traveled across the country, holding rallies to raise mental health awareness and advocate for police reform laws.
He said he was planning a rally for reparations later this year.
“He’s been traveling a lot,” said Sequita Thompson, his grandmother. “He’s had a lot of stress and (heart issues) run in the family.”
“I’m just trying to slow it down,” Clark said from the hospital. “I’ve been going five years straight with no break. ... I’ve never stopped fighting for Stephon.”
Clark has been hospitalized before, though not for his heart. In the months after his brother’s death, Clark was put on a mental health hold at UC Davis for causing damage to a North Sacramento hotel room.
Later, he was transferred to the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center, a secure mental health hospital. Clark said at the time it was a degrading experience that gave him his first insights into mental illness and how it is treated.
“Back then, I couldn’t admit I was grieving — now I could say that,” he said in 2018.
His experience in mental health care inspired his well-known tagline “everybody love everybody.”
Clark continued to work in the public eye, leading efforts for his brother’s memorial foundation, I Am Sac Foundation.
In 2020, he resigned as CEO, saying he was “tired” and handed over operations to his mother, Sequette Clark.
Clark later ran for Sacramento mayor, spoke on a Black Legislative Caucus panel in Washington, D.C., alongside former Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn and helped propel a police reform bill into California law.
“The movement is going to continue as soon as I get out of here,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
