Witness: Kenosha victim not a threat
KENOSHA, Wis. — The first man shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha was acting “belligerently” that night but did not appear to pose a serious threat to anyone, a witness testified Friday at Rittenhouse’s murder trial.
Jason Lackowski, a former Marine who said he took an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to Kenosha last year to help protect property during violent protests against racial injustice, said that Joseph Rosenbaum “asked very bluntly to shoot him” and took a few “false steppings … to entice someone to do something.”
But Lackowski, who was called as a witness by the prosecution, admitted he didn’t see everything that went on between Rittenhouse and Rosenbaum, including their final clash.
The prosecution suffered a potential blow when Rosenbaum’s fiancee, Kariann Swart, disclosed that he was on medication for bipolar disorder and depression but didn’t fill his prescriptions because the local pharmacy was boarded up amid the unrest — information Rittenhouse’s lawyers could use to portray Rosenbaum as the aggressor that night.
On the day he was killed, Rosenbaum had been released from a Milwaukee hospital after a suicide attempt.
Rittenhouse, 18, is charged with shooting three men, two fatally, in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from the demonstrations that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer.
In other testimony Friday, a Kenosha officer said that because of the chaos that night, police didn’t realize Rittenhouse was the gunman.
Video of police allowing Rittenhouse to pass, even as people were shouting that he had just shot people, was widely circulated and cited by those who say he got preferential treatment because he is white.
Rittenhouse returned to his home in Antioch, Ill., and turned himself in the next day.
Officer Pep Moretti described the area at the time as a “war zone,” adding: “The city was burning and on fire and we’re just outnumbered and completely surrounded.”
Rittenhouse could get life in prison if convicted.