RITTENHOUSE SEEKS RETURN OF GUN USED DURING WIS. PROTEST

Lawyer says he wants the weapon to be destroyed

Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois man acquitted of fatally shooting two men and wounding a third during street protests in Kenosha in 2020, is seeking the return of the gun and other property that police seized after his arrest.

Rittenhouse’s attorney Mark Richards filed paperwork with the Kenosha County Circuit Court on

Wednesday seeking the return of the items, explaining that Rittenhouse wants the AR-15-style rifle back so that it can be destroyed, the Kenosha News reported. He also wants the clothing he was wearing the night of the shootings returned.

Law enforcement have had the gun since the day after Rittenhouse shot three men, two of them fatally, on Aug. 25, 2020, during a night of protests and unrest in the southeastern Wisconsin city of Kenosha over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a White police officer.

Rittenhouse turned himself in to police in his thenhometown of Antioch, Ill., within hours of the shootings. In November, the 19year-old was found not guilty of all charges related to the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz. Conservatives and gun rights advocates rallied around Rittenhouse

in the days after his arrest, saying he was defending Kenosha from farleft militants. Others painted him as a triggerhappy vigilante.

Rittenhouse family spokesman David Hancock said Thursday that Rittenhouse wants to destroy the rifle and plans to throw out his clothing so that no one can use any of it to “celebrate” the shootings.

“At the end of the day, two people did lose their lives, period,” Hancock said. “That weapon was involved in that. That weapon doesn’t belong on a mantle. It doesn’t belong in a museum. It belongs where Kyle wants it, and Kyle wants it destroyed. There’s plenty of people out there who would like to hold these items up, on both sides. That’s nothing Kyle’s interested in.”