Rittenhouse trial: Someone else fired into the air first

The first KENOSHA, WIS. — man shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha during a night of turbulent protests lunged toward Rittenhouse’s rifle in an attempt to take it away just before Rittenhouse fired, a video cameraman testified Thursday.

Richie McGinniss, a video director for the conservative website The Daily Caller, took the stand at Rittenhouse’s murder trial and described watching as Joseph Rosen- baum chased down Ritten- house in one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video.

“I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon,” McGinniss said.

Prosecutor Thomas Bin- ger repeatedly tried to get McGinniss — who was called as a witness by the prosecu- tion — to say Rosenbaum was not “lunging” but “falling” when he was shot, as McGinniss said in a media interview days after the shooting.

But McGinniss said: “He was lunging, falling. I would use those as synonymous terms in this situation because basically, you know, he threw his momentum towards the weapon.”

McGinniss testified that Rittenhouse “kind of dodged around” with his weapon and then leveled the gun and fired.

Rittenhouse, 18, is charged with shooting three men, two of them fatally, in the summer of 2020. The aspir- ing police officer, then 17, had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safe- guard property from vio- lent protests that broke out over the police shooting of a Black man.

Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.

Under questioning by Rittenhouse attorney Mark Rich- ards, McGinniss said Rosen- baum sounded “very angry” as he advanced on Rittenhouse and cursed at him.

As a prosecutor played a video Rosenbaum lying fatally wounded in a car lot, McGinniss struggled to keep his composure on the stand, rapidly inhaling and exhaling, then averting his eyes from a video monitor. The prosecutor apologized for having to play it, saying he had to.

Across the room, Rittenhouse appeared to look away from his desktop monitor and cast his eyes downward as the video showed Rosenbaum bleeding from the head, groaning loudly.

The defense also has said

that a shot fired by someone in the crowd moments before Rittenhouse began shooting made Rittenhouse believe he was under attack.

Kenosha Detective Martin Howard testified that video footage shows that a protester, Joshua Ziminski, had fired the first shot into the air. Howard said he used a stopwatch and timed five or six videos to determine that

2.5 seconds later, Rittenhouse began firing at Rosenbaum.

A wealth of video has been played in court that captured the tumultuous demonstra

tion and the series of shootings.