A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.
Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.
Hancock nonetheless said he initially believed Rittenhouse’s claims of self-defense when he first relayed his story about fatally shooting Rosenbaum and Huber. Yet that changed when he later became aware of text messages that surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the men slain in Kenosha demanding wrongful death damages from Rittenhouse.
Sure wish this had come to light during the trial.
A ton of evidence was blocked iirc, this was probably included.
The judge was doing his damnedest to make sure we all knew where they stood.
This was known back then. The judge blocked it. I can kind of see why because he didn’t shoot any shoplifters. He shot people who threatened, chased, and assaulted him.
The whole situation was stupid and he shouldn’t have been there but from all the video I’ve seen of the actual event he was pretty selective with his targets when it came to actually shooting people. It wasn’t consistent with his bragging. I kind of wish people would stop giving him attention at this point because all they’re accomplishing is giving him a platform to grift rightwingers from.
The analysis I read from a lawyer explained how Wisconsin’s state laws on self defense are weirdly complex, and due to the exact order of events, under those laws, his intent technically didn’t matter, and that’s why it was inadmissible evidence. In most states it would be admissable, and he would be guilty. He even listed the laws out and while I don’t recall any of the details now, it did seem perfectly logical to my layman’s understanding. So it’s not that the judge was biased, it’s just that Rittenhouse, through dumb luck, happened to fall through a legal loophole. Wisconsin needs to fix it’s laws, because it’s abundantly clear he wanted to kill those people and morally speaking, I consider him to be an unrepentant murderer.
I don’t see that to be clear at all. He fled from the first person who attacked him and didn’t shoot him until they guy caught him and was trying to take his weapon after verbally threatening him. The other two men he shot both attacked him as well when he was fleeing the first incident. If I recall correctly one had struck him with a skateboard and the other pointed a handgun at him while he was down. Considering there were other people chasing after him he didn’t shoot I’d consider him to have been fairly restrained. Usually people trying to fake a “I was just defending myself” defense put less effort into creating their pretext for shooting.
To me this entire situation was the people on both sides of it playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
This is how Wisconsin’s law is so fucked up: The three men he shot were not working together, were not coordinated, did not know each other. So, on the one hand, Rittenhouse may have subjectively felt under coordinated attack, he was not, but the subjective feeling is what matters for the law.
From Huber:s POV, he was trying to disarm a murderer. Maybe he felt threatened, too? But the law is so fucked, his POV doesn’t matter because he’s dead. In Grosskreutz’s POV, he was approaching an active shooter who’d just killed two men and trying to defuse the situation. When Rittenhouse pointed his gun, Grosskreutz would have been justified under the same law in blowing him away.
In short, the law incentivizes shooting first.
Is Wisconsin’s law really any different? Most states the test for self defense is reasonable belief that your life is in danger from an imminent threat, but I’d doubt that claim from anyone who is pursuing someone else who is fleeing from them.
I’m not familiar with other states’ laws. They could also be fucked up, too.
It would have made zero difference. Actions speak louder than words, and what he did that day directly contradicts this ‘message’.
He said he wanted to shoot a bunch of people for imagined slights, and he went on to do exactly that.
He went on to shoot people for imagined slights?
There is video, goofball. Three people attempted to murder him, unprovoked.
It’s not imagined that Rosenbaum screamed a literal death threat at him and then chased him down and tried to take his weapon to make good on said threat.
It’s not imagined that Huber tried to kill Rittenhouse with full swings of a skateboard (over 10 pounds on average, inarguably a lethal weapon when swung at the head) to the head, one of which connected.
It’s not imagined that Grosskreutz pointed his handgun (by the way, actually illegally possessed, unlike Rittenhouse’s rifle) at Rittenhouse’s head, before Rittenhouse raised his rifle and shot his arm (having a faster reaction time literally saved his life in that instance). Hell, he literally admitted to that being the sequence of events in court.
The only imagining is happening on your side. The facts contradict your narrative, that’s why you have no choice but to grasp at straws and lie when you’re confronted by them.
I would certainly consider roaming the streets openly wielding a firearm to fall under a reasonable definition of “provocation”. It is unreasonable to expect a person on the street to distinguish between an active shooter and a “good guy with a gun”.
It’s almost like the “good guy with a gun” is an idiotic idea which turns situations into powder kegs of confusion and violence where everyone thinks they’re the good guy and bullets start flying.
Who cares what you would consider provocation? The fact is no one there on that day felt provoked by it. No one reacted negatively to his arrival while obviously visibly armed, nor his walking around visibly armed, for hours, while he handed out water bottle and gave first aid to people. And why is it that the first person to react negatively to him was a maniac who pissed because the dumpster fire he set was extinguished? His rage had literally nothing to do with Rittenhouse’s weapon.
If the mere existence of the gun was so provocative, explain why no one there gave a shit about it. Reconcile your assertion with the facts, if you can.
That’s not really relevant, because Huber and Grosskreutz’s actions are completely nonsensical regardless of whether they assessed Rittenhouse as one or the other accurately. They both decided to try and kill Rittenhouse, and he prevented them from doing so, absolutely justified in defending his life against two more attempted murders, after already being forced to do so once, with Rosenbaum.
Not to mention that Rittenhouse was moving TOWARD the police line to report what had just happened with Rosenbaum, verbally announcing that he was doing so, when the other two decided they wanted to kill him instead.
You and I have different definitions of the word “fact”.
Fact: On all of the video there is of him preceding Rosenbaum’s attack, no one is reacting in a way that indicates that they feel provoked by his armed presence.
Fact: You’re imbuing this magical inherent provocation based on literally nothing. It’s what you want to be true, so that you can rationalize your baseless narrative.
Woosh