Teenager cleared of murder after shooting two dead at protests
Verdict on killings during demonstration over police brutality sends ‘horrible message’, says mayor
AN AMERICAN teenager who shot dead two men during police brutality protests in Wisconsin has been acquitted of murder in a case that has divided the country.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he shot three men, two fatally, with a semi-automatic rifle in the city of Kenosha in August last year, was cleared of all five charges against him.
He had faced the prospect of life in prison if found guilty of the most serious charge, intentional homicide.
An overwhelmingly white jury unanimously acquitted him of the other four charges – reckless homicide, attempted intentional homicide and two counts of recklessly endangering safety – after almost four days of deliberation.
The sobbing teenager collapsed and had to be helped into his chair as the final verdict was read out in court.
Mr Rittenhouse, now 18, has maintained he acted in self-defence.
President Joe Biden said he was “angry and concerned” by the verdict, but added: “We must acknowledge that the jury has spoken”.
The verdict was met with jubilation by conservatives, for whom Mr Rittenhouse’s case had become a cause célèbre. Among Republicans, Mr Rittenhouse was painted as a patriot.
“Justice has been served,” said Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s Republican senator.
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic mayor of New York, was among the first to react to the verdict, calling it “disgusting”. He said: “To call this a miscarriage of justice is an understatement.”
The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, said the verdict throws into doubt the safety of people who protest in support of black Americans. “It seems to me that it’s open season on human rights demonstrators,” he said.
The case has become a flashpoint in the debate over gun rights and vigilantism since the racial injustice and antipolice brutality protests that followed the murder of George Floyd last year.
The civil unrest in Kenosha, a city of 100,000 people on the shores of Lake Michigan, was prompted by the police shooting of yet another black man, Jacob Blake. The 29-year-old was left paralysed from the waist down.
During a night of racial justice protests and unrest, Mr Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and injured Gaige Grosskreutz, 28.
Mr Huber’s parents, John Huber and Karen Bloom, said they were “heartbroken” by the verdict, which “sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.”
Mr Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot, but many have seen an undercurrent of race in the case, in part because the protesters were on the street to decry police violence against black people. The incident was caught on video, giving it a national spotlight.
Prosecutors claimed that Mr Rittenhouse was a “wannabe soldier” who had “provoked” the bloodshed.
Mark Richards, his defence lawyer, argued Mr Rittenhouse did not “shoot at anyone until he was chased and cornered. Every person who was shot was attacking Kyle ... one with his hands, one with his feet, one with a gun.”
Mr Rittenhouse insisted he “didn’t do anything wrong. I did not intend to kill them. I intended to stop the people who were attacking me.”