Kyle Rittenhouse calmly walked the streets of Kenosha with a semiautomatic rifle in his hands without being stopped by the police. The 17-year-old, who shot participants in the racial protests in Wisconsin on Tuesday, has been charged by authorities with the murder of two people and wounding one more with his weapon. The adolescent idolized the police and defended the use of weapons on his social networks, so on the night of August 25 he headed for the demonstrations to, according to him, "protect people and businesses" with a group of armed civilians.
A series of videos, posted on social media, show Rittenhouse's presence that night in the riots and the moment when he fired at protesters. Two hours before the shooting, a reporter for a local newspaper gives him a brief interview in which the boy explains the reasons why he has attended the protest. “They are hurting people and our job is to protect business,” he says. The journalist asks him why he is armed and the young man answers: "I have a rifle because I have to protect myself, obviously." Later, the boy appears in the video of a passerby in which he says he has been pepper sprayed, greets the police and continues on his way.
The moment of the shooting has been recorded almost entirely by various cameras. First, Rittenhouse is seen fleeing a group of people, still unidentified, who were pursuing him. A shot that someone fires into the air is heard and the young man shoots the man closest to him four times in the head. A few minutes later he continues to flee while some people point to him and follow him. Rittenhouse falls to the ground and shoots two men who were going to arrest him, one in the chest and the other in the arm. The young man gets up and continues walking, always with his rifle in hand.
“It's the shooter!” Several people shout a few streets ahead where at least four police cars are waiting. Rittenhouse raises his arms and slowly approaches the agents. The vans and police cars ignore him, dodge him and he drives off. The young man was arrested about 12 hours later at his home in the neighboring state of Illinois. The authorities do not know if the young man attended the protests to join the call of a local militia that calls itself Kenosha Guard and that intended to do security work, or if he attended the demonstrations alone. A photo from the morning of the same day shows him erasing graffiti on the Kenosha courthouse. There he appears unarmed.
Rittenhouse used to post photos on his social media accounts in which he wore T-shirts with the phrase Blue Lives Matter - the slogan replicated by Black Lives Matter but in defense of police work - and with his rifle hanging from one arm. It also showed images of police officers who had died in acts of service. Facebook has suspended his profile after he was arrested. The boy also had enrolled in a program for police cadets and had also shared photos wearing the academy uniform. Rittenhouse attended a Trump rally in Iowa in January, the Chicago Tribune has found . The boy posted videos on TikTok from the front row of the event. He was working as a lifeguard at the YMCA facility in Lindenhust, Illinois, but activities were suspended since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March.
The city will continue under a strict curfew until next Sunday. President Trump has ordered the dispatch of federal forces to quell protests that have not ceased since last Sunday, when a police officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, seven times in the back.
The Justice Department has announced that it will participate in the investigation into the Blake attack. The Wisconsin authorities have revealed the first details of the incident and have assured that the young black man had "a knife in his possession" when the agent shot him. The weapon was found inside the car, but it has not been clarified if Blake had the knife in his hands when police pointed it at him. The seven shots at Blake were fired by a single police officer who has been identified as Rusten Sheskey. So far the rest of the police officers involved in the incident are suspended and on "administrative leave."
