Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Protest suspect called killer, scared teen
KENOSHA, Wis. — Jurors Tuesday heard starkly different portrayals of Kyle Rittenhouse in opening statements at his trial on charges of shooting three people on the streets of Kenosha during a turbulent protest against racial injustice in the summer of 2020.
A prosecutor said Rittenhouse set the bloodshed in motion when he triggered a confrontation with a man and then killed him with a bullet in the back.
But Rittenhouse’s attorney told the jury that his client acted in self-defense after the man tried to grab his gun and others kicked him in the face and clubbed him in the head with a skateboard.
“You as jurors will end up looking at it from the standpoint of a 17-year-old under the circumstances as they existed,” defense attorney Mark Richards said.
Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with killing two men and wounding a third with an assault- style rifle. The one-time aspiring police officer could get life in prison if convicted.
The teenager traveled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois, just across the Wisconsin state line, after protests broke out over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse said he went there to protect property after two nights in which rioters set fires and ransacked businesses.
The first witness was his sister’s boyfriend, Dominick Black, who faces charges for buying the rifle for Rittenhouse months before the shootings because the teenager was not old enough to own one at the time.
Black testified that he and Rittenhouse went to downtown Kenosha to help protect a car dealership after vehicles were burned the night before. Black said he thought nobody would start trouble if they saw him with a rifle. He also said Rittenhouse helped give medical aid and put out fires.
Black said he was on the roof as protesters hurled gasoline bombs and rocks at the business. He said he heard gunshots but didn’t know Rittenhouse was involved until the teenager called and said, “I shot somebody, I shot somebody.”
Afterward, Black said, Rittenhouse was “freaking out. He was really scared. He was pale, shaking a lot.” Black said Rittenhouse told him that he acted in self-defense because “people were trying to hurt him.”
Prosecutor Thomas Binger described the unrest in Kenosha as “two of the roughest nights that our community has ever seen” and said outsiders were drawn to the city “like moths to a flame.”
Yet Binger repeatedly said that amid the hundreds of people in Kenosha and the anger and chaos in the streets, “the only person who killed anyone is the defendant, Kyle Rittenhouse.”
“When we consider the reasonableness of the defendant’s actions, I ask you to keep this in mind,” Binger said, after telling the jury that a claim of self-defense can be valid only if Rittenhouse reasonably believed he was using deadly force to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.
The prosecutor said that it is not known exactly what words were said, but it is clear that Rittenhouse started a confrontation that led Joseph Rosenbaum to begin chasing him across a parking lot.
Binger emphasized that Rosenbaum, 36, was killed by a shot to the back after he threw a plastic bag. The first two bullets hit him in the lower extremities, causing him to fall forward, the prosecutor said.
Richards, the defense attorney, argued that it was Rosenbaum who “lit the fuse that night.” He yelled an expletive at Rittenhouse and lunged for his gun, according to the defense.
Rittenhouse fired four shots in less than a second because Rosenbaum was “trying to take Kyle’s weapon from him to use against him,” Richards said.
Binger, the prosecutor, said that after shooting Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse fled instead of rendering aid, despite portraying himself as a medic earlier in the night. But Richards said Rittenhouse didn’t stop to help because the crowd wanted to “kill him,” and instead ran toward police.
The crowd at that point clearly believed Rittenhouse was an active shooter, the prosecutor said.
Moments after shooting Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wis., who was seen on bystander video hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard. He wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a protester from West Allis, Wis., who had a gun in his hand as he stepped toward Rittenhouse.