Instigator or victim? Rittenhouse trial starts
KENOSHA, WIS. >> Jurors heard starkly different portrayals of Kyle Rittenhouse — instigator or victim — in opening statements at his trial Tuesday on charges of shooting three people on the streets of Kenosha during a turbulent protest against racial injustice.
A prosecutor said Rittenhouse set the bloodshed in motion when he triggered a confrontation with a man that night and then killed him with a bullet to the back.
But Rittenhouse’s attorney told the jury that his client acted in self-defense after the man tried to grab Rittenhouse’s gun and others kicked the teen 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 during the summer of 2020 with an assault-style rifle. The onetime 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 Dominick Black, who was dating Rittenhouse’s sister at the time. Black faces charges he bought the rifle for Rittenhouse months before the shootings because the teen 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 his assault-style rifle. He also said Rittenhouse helped give medical aid and put out fires.
In his opening statement, 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 stressed 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.”
Moments after shooting Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wisconsin, who was seen on bystander video hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard. The defense attorney portrayed Rittenhouse as the victim, saying Huber was “trying to separate the head from the body” with the skateboard.
Rittenhouse then wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a protester from West Allis, Wisconsin, who had a gun in his hand as he stepped toward Rittenhouse.
The most serious count against Rittenhouse, firstdegree intentional homicide, is Wisconsin’s top murder charge.