Kenosha Shooter Kyle Rittenhouse To Stand Trial
Kyle Rittenhouse is the 17-year-old who is accused of fatally wounding two people during a September protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Despite requests from his lawyer, he has been ordered to stand trial.
According to The Washington Post, Rittenhouse’s attorneys argued the case was self-defense. However, Kenosha County Court Commissioner Loren Keating ruled that the charges of possession of a deadly weapon by a minor and one of two charges of reckless endangerment would stand.
In one bizarre moment, Rittenhouse’s legal team reportedly tried to have the judge “dismiss the charge of possession of a deadly weapon by a minor by noting that subsets of the statute are related to hunting and involve short-barrel weaponry.”
Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger slammed the argument, saying, “It wasn’t hunting season. This wasn’t a case where a kid went up north with his dad to hunt deer. This was a situation in which a teenager went running around the streets of Kenosha after curfew with a very dangerous weapon.”
Kyle Rittenhouse’s arraignment will be on Jan. 5.
Rittenhouse was arrested at his home in Antioch, Illinois a day after the August 25 fatal shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26.
Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, was also reportedly shot and wounded by Rittenhouse.
There are questions surrounding why Rittenhouse, who lived in Illinois, was even in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His lawyers claimed a business owner invited him to protect property but have not identified who made the request.
Rittenhouse received help from child actor Ricky Schroder to post the $2 million bail and he is now out on the streets.
Dominick Black, 19, the man who said that he purchased a rifle for Rittenhouse, has been charged with two counts of intentionally supplying a dangerous weapon to a minor, causing death, the Kenosha News reports.
