Stimulus got me this gun
Wis. teen in protester slay used COVID aid to buy killer weapon
A teenage gunman charged with killing two Wisconsin protesters this summer paid for the assault-style rifle used in the shooting with money he got from a taxpayer-funded stimulus program, he said in a jailhouse interview published Thursday.
Kyle Rittenhouse, who is too young to legally carry a firearm in the state unless he’s hunting, had an adult friend buy the Smith & Wesson M&P15 on his behalf just weeks before the Aug. 25 shooting, according to police.
“I got my $1,200 from the coronavirus Illinois unemployment cause I was on furlough from the YMCA and I got my first unemployment check, so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll use this to buy it,’” he told the Washington Post in the first interview since his arrest on homicide charges.
Authorities said the 17-yearold Illinois resident then kept the weapon at the home of his friend’s stepfather in Kenosha, the small southern Wisconsin city where protests and riots erupted in August over the police shooting of unarmed Black man Jacob Blake, 39, who was left paralyzed from the waist down after police shot him in the back seven times in a caught-on-tape confrontation.
Rittenhouse’s friend, Dominick Black, faces two felony counts of supplying a dangerous weapon to a minor causing death.
Rittenhouse, who thought of himself as a medic, said he packed a first-aid kit and traveled to Kenosha the night of the shooting to help protect businesses and offer medical care to anyone who was injured. But he also armed himself with the rifle Black brought him and freely walked through the streets with the gun slung over his shoulder, cellphone videos and police records show.
Later that night, Rittenhouse used the weapon to fatally shoot 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and 26-year-old Anthony Huber during an apparent confrontation over the rifle, authorities said. He also shot an armed protester, Gaige Grosskreutz, who survived the attack. The gunshot victims had reportedly attended previous racial justice demonstrations in Kenosha.
The white suspect insists he fired the gun in self-defense, telling the Post in a phone interview he brought the rifle because he feared his life could be in danger during the civil unrest.
“I was going into a place where people had guns and God forbid somebody brought a gun to me and decided to shoot me ... I wanted to be protected, which I ended up having to protect myself,” he told the paper.
Asked what he expected the evening would be like for him, Rittenhouse said he thought he would be “watching over” a local business from rioters and
“providing first aid for minor injuries to people.”
Rittenhouse, who’s being prosecuted as an adult, is being held on $2 million bond on charges of intentional homicide, illegally possessing a gun and other crimes. He could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
The case has drawn nationwide attention as critics describe the young man as a domestic terrorist whose armed presence in a racial justice protest may have incited more street violence. Far-right pundits and politicians, however, have praised him as a hero who was exercising his right to bear arms while protecting the city’s buildings.