Kenosha:
A judge agreed Friday to delay for a month a decision on whether a 17-year-old from Illinois should be returned to Wisconsin to face charges accusing him of fatally shooting two protesters and wounding a third during a night of unrest following the weekend police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.
The Illinois judge postponed Kyle Rittenhouse’s extradition hearing to Sept. 25 during a brief hearing that was streamed online. Rittenhouse faces five felony charges, including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide, and a misdemeanor charge for possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor.
Rittenhouse did not appear in the livestreamed hearing, where his attorney Jennifer Snyder, an assistant public defender in Lake County, Illinois, asked for the delay. The judge said Rittenhouse had been permitted to speak by phone with his mother and was in the process of hiring an attorney.
Rittenhouse, a white teen who was armed with a semi-automatic rifle as he walked Kenosha’s streets with other armed civilians during this week’s protests, would face a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree intentional homicide. Under Wisconsin law, anyone 17 or older is treated as an adult in the criminal justice system.
He was taken into custody on Wednesday in Antioch, Illinois, the city about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Kenosha where he lives. The shootings late Tuesday were largely caught on cellphone video and posted online. The shooting by police on Sunday of Blake, a 29-year-old Black father of six who was left paralyzed from the waist down, was also caught on cellphone video. That shooting made Kenosha the latest focal point in the fight against racial injustice that has gripped the country since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
Three nights later, Rittenhouse was armed and on the streets of Kenosha, saying that he was protecting businesses from protesters, according to widely circulating cellphone footage. The criminal complaint said that Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, following Rittenhouse into a used car lot, where he threw a plastic bag at the gunman and attempted to take the weapon from him. The medical examiner found that Rosenbaum was shot in the groin and back — which fractured his pelvis and perforated his right lung and liver — and his left hand. He also suffered a superficial wound to his left thigh and a graze wound to his forehead.
Rittenouse then ran down the street and was chased by several people shouting that he just shot someone before he tripped and fell, according to the complaint and video footage. Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, was shot in the chest after apparently trying to wrest the gun from Rittenhouse, the complaint said. Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, who appeared to be holding a gun, was then shot in the left arm after approaching Rittenhouse, the complaint said.
Rittenhouse’s attorney, Lin Wood, said Thursday that the teenager was acting in self-defense. “From my standpoint, it’s important that the message be clear to other Americans who are attacked that there will be legal resources available in the event false charges are brought against them,” he said. “Americans should never be deterred from exercising their right of self-defense.” Kenosha police faced questions about their interactions with the gunman on Tuesday night. According to witness accounts and video footage, police apparently let the gunman walk past them and leave the scene with a rifle over his shoulder and his hands in the air, as members of the crowd yelled for him to be arrested because he had shot people.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said the gunman likely slipped away because the scene was chaotic, with lots of radio traffic and people screaming, chanting and running — conditions he said can cause “tunnel vision” among law officers. Video taken before the shooting shows police tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle and thanking civilians armed with long guns walking the streets. One of them appears to be Rittenhouse.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes on Thursday decried how Rittenhouse, whom he described as a vigilante accountable to nobody, could walk away while police talked about finding a knife inside Blake’s vehicle after he was shot in the back. He said the fact that Rittenhouse and others came to Kenosha to take matters into their own hands “was completely horrifying.” The state Department of Justice on Friday released new information, including the names of two other officers on the scene when Blake was shot in the back seven times Sunday as he leaned into his SUV, in which three of his children were seated.
State authorities earlier identified the officer who shot Blake as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha Police Department. The other two officers were Vincent Arenas, who has been with the department since February 2019 and previously served with the U.S. Capitol Police Department, and Brittany Meronek, who joined the Kenosha police force in January. Authorities said the officers were responding to a call about a domestic dispute when they attempted to arrest Blake, though they didn’t explain why. Sheskey shot Blake while holding onto his shirt after he and Arenas unsuccessfully used Tasers on him twice, the department said in a Friday news release. State agents later recovered a knife from the floor on the driver’s side of the vehicle, the department said. State authorities did not say Blake threatened anyone with a knife.
