Rittenhouse Trial: Said He Killed Two Men in Self Defense While Protecting Kenosha

 

Rittenhouse home Antioch, IL; Act in Kenosha, WI

(Distant of 21 miles)

Type weapon Rittenhouse used for the shootings

Rittenhouse under oath testifying for himself

(Academy Award Performance - Will it work)

Kyle Rittenhouse trial (teen who shot three men – killing two) from the NY TIMES with this headline:

“At the center of the Rittenhouse trial is a military-style rifle in a teenager’s hands”

Rittenhouse’s trial has returned again and again to the semiautomatic rifle he used to kill two men and wound a third during the unrest in Kenosha, WI last year. The gun — a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 — and the decisions he made while carrying it in a chaotic protest zone figure prominently as the defense offers its case and Rittenhouse testifies.

One of the six criminal counts he faces is possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 (he was 17 at the time of the shootings). He has pleaded not guilty, but it remains to be seen how his lawyers will try to defend him from that charge.

The jury has seen plentiful video images showing Rittenhouse walking the streets of Kenosha on the night of August 25, 2020, with the rifle dangling by the sling he bought at a sporting goods store that day. Rittenhouse spent that evening with a group of people who said they had gone downtown to try to guard businesses from vandalism and arson. Several people in the group carried similar guns, which generally is legal for adults to do in Wisconsin, an “open carry” state.

That added to the peril in Kenosha, according to a witness who testified in the trial last week.

Richie McGinniss, a videographer for the conservative website The Daily Caller, who visited a number of cities roiled by protests that summer said: “Any time that there are guns that elevates the level of danger in my mind.”

A friend of Rittenhouse’s, Dominick Black, was carrying his own semiautomatic rifle in Kenosha that night. Black testified that he used Rittenhouse’s money to buy a comparable rifle for him at a hardware store in northern Wisconsin in May 2020, when Black was 18 but Rittenhouse was underage. They took target practice together on land owned by Black’s family, Black testified.

Black is charged with two felony counts of providing the gun to Rittenhouse.

He acknowledged on the stand that he was testifying for the prosecution in the hope of a lighter sentence on those charges.

Black testified that he kept Rittenhouse’s gun stored at his family home in Kenosha. When the unrest broke out in Kenosha, Black said, his stepfather took guns out of a safe in the garage and moved them into the house in case of a break-in. 

On the day of the shooting, before Black and Rittenhouse went downtown, Black saw his friend come upstairs with the rifle, Black testified. Though Rittenhouse had not asked permission to take the gun along, Black said he did nothing to dissuade him from doing so when they went downtown, intending to help guard several used-car lots.

Rittenhouse’s trial – the latest here from the AP.

My 2 Cents: I don’t care what stories are told, or Rittenhouse’s academy award crying performance and such, but the fact is he had a gun illegally, went out of state from his home in Illinois to Wisconsin – some 21 miles away, with the assault rifle, and had the intent to act like a savior for the town of Kenosha, WI as some kind of “Rambo.”

He had no rights whatsoever to be in that situation. He deserves plenty of prison time for taking those two lives, period. That would be justice. But, we shall see.

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