Prosecutor: Rittenhouse provoked the bloodshed in Kenosha

Kyle Rittenhouse provoked bloodshed on the streets of Kenosha by bringing a semi-automatic rifle to a protest and menacing others, and when the shooting stopped, he walked off like a “hero in a Western,” a prosecutor said in closing arguments Monday at Rittenhouse’s murder trial.

But Rittenhouse’s lawyer countered that the shooting started after the young man was ambushed by a “crazy person” that night and feared his gun was going to be wrested away and used to kill him. Defense attorney Mark Richards said Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

After a full day of arguments, the jurors were told to return Tuesday morning for the start of deliberations in the case that has stirred fierce debate in the U.S. over guns, vigilantism and law and order.

Eighteen jurors have been hearing the case; the 12 who will decide Rittenhouse’s fate and the six who will be designated alternates will be determined by drawing numbers from a lottery drum.

Rittenhouse, then 17, shot two men to death and wounded a third during a tumultuous night of protests against racial injustice in the summer of 2020.

Rittenhouse said he went to Kenosha from his home in Antioch, Ill., to protect property from rioters in the days after a Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot by a white Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse, a former police youth cadet, is white, as were those he shot.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Thomas Binger said Rittenhouse was a “wannabe soldier” and was “looking for trouble that night.” Binger repeatedly showed the jury drone video that he said depicted Rittenhouse pointing the Arstyle weapon at demonstrators.

Rittenhouse, now 18, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him, firstdegree intentional homicide, which is Wisconsin’s top murder count.

Binger zeroed in on the killing of 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum, who was the first man gunned down that night and whose shooting set in motion the ones that followed.

In his own closing argument, Richards, the defense attorney, called Rosenbaum a “crazy person” who was “hell-bent on causing trouble that night” and went after Rittenhouse unprovoked.