ANTIOCH TEEN CHARGED WITH GUNNING DOWN PROTESTERS IN KENOSHA
Attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse says teen acted in self-defense; father of Jacob Blake says his son has been handcuffed to hospital bed
KENOSHA, Wis. — Prosecutors here on Thursday formally charged a 17-year-old from northeastern Illinois in the fatal shooting of two protesters and the wounding of a third during a night of unrest following the weekend shooting of Jacob Blake.
Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch faces charges of first-degree intentional homicide, one count of reckless homicide, one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment. He is expected to appear in court Friday morning.
Meanwhile, Blake — who was seriously wounded in Sunday’s shooting by Kenosha police — remained hospitalized in Milwaukee.
When his father visited him Wednesday, he said his son was handcuffed to the bed.
“I hate it that he was laying in that bed with the handcuff onto the bed,” his father, also named Jacob Blake, said Thursday. “He can’t go anywhere. Why do you have him cuffed to the bed?”
Asked why his son was handcuffed, Blake’s father replied “he’s under arrest.” The father also said it was unclear what charge or charges his son might be facing, explaining “right now, we don’t know. We’re playing it by ear.”
The Kenosha Police Department, Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office and Wisconsin Department of Justice did not respond to requests for information on wheth
er the younger Blake, 29, had been arrested or charged.
The younger Blake was shot multiple times in the back as he leaned into his SUV by Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey and is paralyzed from the waist down. In the hospital, he told his father he thought he could feel pain in his legs, but his father isn’t sure if the pain is actually coming from his legs.
The father said he hasn’t heard from the police department or Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian, though Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has reached out. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Later Thursday, Evers, in a televised news conference, said he did not know why Blake would need to be handcuffed to the bed.
“He’s paid a horrific price already,” the governor said. “I can’t imagine why that is happening. I would hope we would be able to find a better way for him to get better and recover.”
The family’s attorney is working to ensure Jacob Blake can go home once he’s released from the hospital, his father said.
When Blake saw his father in the hospital Wednesday, he thought he was hallucinating because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, according to his father.
“I told him, ‘You thought Daddy wasn’t going to see my son?’ ” his father said. “He grabbed my hand, held it real tight and started weeping, telling me how much he loved me.”
Rittenhouse attorney says self-defense
Demonstrators have swarmed Kenosha in the days since Blake’s shooting. The unrest turned violent Tuesday night when three people were shot, two of them fatally. Authorities arrested Rittenhouse early Wednesday at the home he shares with his mother in Antioch.
Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, and Joseph “Jojo” Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, were fatally shot. Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, of West Allis, was shot in the arm and is expected to recover.
Rittenhouse’s attorney, Lin Wood, said the teen was acting in self-defense. Cellphone footage shows the shooter being chased into a used car lot by someone before shots are heard and the person lies dead.
The shooter then runs down the street where he is chased by several people shouting that he had just shot someone. He stumbles after being approached by several people and fires, killing another man and injuring the third.
“From my standpoint, it’s important that the message be clear to other Americans who are attacked that there will be legal resources available in the event false charges are brought against them,” Wood said. “Americans should never be deterred from exercising their right of self-defense.”
Rittenhouse was assigned a public defender in Illinois for a hearing on his transfer to Wisconsin. Under Wisconsin law, anyone 17 or older is treated as an adult in the criminal justice system.
‘Kenosha’s people’
Kenosha police said protests Wednesday evening were peaceful, a welcome change they attributed to a decrease in out-of-town demonstrators.
“I think that the people who were here last night were Kenosha’s people,” Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said at a news conference Thursday at which he and other local authorities offered prepared remarks and took no questions.
“We didn’t see streams of cars coming in from out of Kenosha County. A huge part of me thinks that a lot of our issues start when different people with different agendas come here to Kenosha,” he said, noting a marked decrease in the number of protesters.
“Hopefully, we’re over that hump of what we have to face,” he said. “We know that there are still people out there, instigators, that are trying to cause trouble and fire things up.”
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, speaking later Thursday alongside Gov. Evers, condemned Rittenhouse, describing him as an “outside agitator from Illinois with a long gun” who was able to walk away from Tuesday night’s shooting scene, while Blake was shot seven times in the back by police.
“This person shouldn’t be celebrated as a vigilante,” Barnes said of the teen, who remains in custody in Illinois.
Authorities made a concerted effort to clamp down on mayhem Wednesday morning, imposing a 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew and announcing they would begin enforcing it with arrests.
Mayor Antaramian said the city is making strides to address issues of racial injustice that hopefully bring safety and unity to the community.
“The city has been working, along with other entities, on putting together a number of committees that are going to be working on systemic racism and dealing with how we’re going to improve our community and give everyone a voice,” Antaramian said, noting that he’d asked Roy People, a local African American pastor, to head up the effort.
“Our community is known around the world for the wrong things,” People said. “And I dutifully believe that we have the structure in place now to address every issue that we need.”
The national and state chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday called for the resignation of Sheriff Beth and Kenosha Police Chief Dan Miskinis over their handling of Blake’s shooting and the subsequent protests.
Also Thursday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson held a news conference in Kenosha to call on protesters not to give President Donald Trump and the Republican Party any more ammunition to use in his presidential campaign. Trump has made “law and order” a focus of his reelection bid.
“I will say to the citizens of this area, be nonviolent and disciplined . ... They want to use the riots as commercials for this president. Do not let them use the fires as commercials,” Jackson said regarding several Kenosha businesses that had been set afire by looters.