Attorneys allege Kenosha shooter is evading them
MADISON, Wis. – Attorneys for a man shot and injured by Kyle Rittenhouse during a protest in 2020 are asking a federal judge to give them more time to serve Rittenhouse with a civil lawsuit, alleging that he is purposefully trying to evade them.
Attorneys for Gaige Grosskreutz filed the request on Wednesday, the deadline that U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman had given them to serve the lawsuit on Rittenhouse and the other defendants. Grosskreutz added Rittenhouse as a defendant last week in the lawsuit that also targets the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and local officials.
The lawsuit, originally filed in October 2021, accuses Rittenhouse and other defendants, including a host of local law enforcement agencies, of causing the injuries that Grosskreutz suffered that night. It is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.
The lawsuit is similar to one filed by the father of Anthony Huber, one of two men Rittenhouse shot and killed that night.
Rittenhouse was charged with homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangering for killing Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum and wounding Grosskreutz with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle in the summer of 2020 during a tumultuous night of protests over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer.
Rittenhouse, now 20, was acquitted of all charges in November 2021 after testifying he acted in self-defense.
An attorney for Grosskreutz said in a legal filing Wednesday that all of the other defendants, except for Rittenhouse, have accepted and waived service of the lawsuit. Rittenhouse’s attorney in the Huber lawsuit said he was not authorized to accept service and a person believed to be Rittenhouse’s mother who answered the door at a home in Florida said “Rittenhouse had been gone for a while,” according to the filing.
Grosskreutz “is currently unaware of Mr. Rittenhouse’s current whereabouts and is concerned that Mr. Rittenhouse is attempting to evade service,” according to the filing seeking a 60-day extension to serve him.
Rittenhouse last week changed attorneys for the Huber lawsuit, going back to one of his defense attorneys from the trial, Mark Richards.
Adelman, in the Huber lawsuit, earlier this month denied a motion by Rittenhouse and other defendants seeking to dismiss the case. The judge said in that case that Huber’s death “could plausibly be regarded as having been proximately caused by the actions of the governmental defendants.”
Attorneys and private investigators for Huber’s father spent more than 100 hours trying to locate Rittenhouse, tracking down addresses in seven states before they found the home of his mother and sister in Florida. The lawsuit was served on Rittenhouse’s sister, who said that he wasn’t home.