Kyle Rittenhouse takes the stand to testify in his own defense

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Kyle Rittenhouse has broken down on the witness stand as he recalled the moment he was ‘ambushed’ by Joseph Rosenbaum the night he shot him dead.

His mother Wendy watched on from the public gallery of Kenosha County Courthouse, weeping, as Judge Bruce Schroeder called a halt to proceedings in the dramatic morning of testimony. 

Rittenhouse had taken the stand in his own defense to tell the court that Rosembaum threatened to kill him twice – once while swinging a heavy chain and the second time when he said he would ‘cut out your f***ing heart’ and ‘kill you N-word.’

The teen recounted the events of the night and explained that he had gone to administer medical aid, armed with his rifle but not looking for trouble, when he found himself alone and cut off from the rest of the group with whom he had been earlier on the evening of August 25, 2020.   

Questioned by his lead attorney Mark Richards, Rittenhouse said that he had been attempting to put out vehicles in one of three Car Source properties that he and his fellow so-called vigilantes were in downtown Kenosha to protect during the nights of civil unrest that followed the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake.

Armed with a fire extinguisher, his medical bag and his AR-15, he said, ‘I started running towards the Car Source number three to put out fires, pausing occasionally to catch my breath and walk.

‘As I’m walking I hear somebody scream, ‘Burn in Hell!’ and I replied with, ‘Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!’ Like I just want to put out the fires.

‘I noticed a flame in the back seat of a [vehicle] and I stepped towards [it] and as I’m stepping forward I believe his name is Joshua Ziminski steps towards me with a pistol in his hand.

‘I drop the fire extinguisher and step back. My plan is to get out of that situation and go back North to Sheridan Road.’

His emotion clearly rising Rittenhouse continued, ‘Once I take that step I look back over my shoulder and Mr. Rosenbaum was no running from my right side and there were people right there…’

At this point Rittenhouse’s testimony became unintelligible as he began sobbing in gulping breaths until the judge was forced to call a halt to proceedings and ushered the jury out.

Earlier Rittenhouse had appeared calm and spoken clearly told the court that he did not go to downtown Kenosha ‘looking for trouble’ and would not have shot Joseph Rosenbaum if he hadn’t, ‘chased after him and tried to take his fire-arm.’

He told the court that he was there to administer medical aid that evening and that during the evening he had bound a woman’s sprained ankle and tended to fellow vigilante Ryan Balch when he was affected by a chemical bomb – helping him with his breathing and to irrigate his eyes.

Rittenhouse is a trained lifeguard with some first aid training. He is currently studying nursing at the University of Arizona.

According to Rittenhouse he had gone into downtown Kenosha earlier that day to help clean graffiti off the side of Reuther Central High School. It was during the trip with his friend Dominick Black and sister McKenzie that he said he met the owners of local business Car Source – which has three locations in the small town.

Car Source owners Anmol ‘Sam’ and Sahil ‘Sal’ Khindri have both stated under oath that they did not ask anyone to protect their property though two defense witnesses and one witness for the state said that they did.

Today Rittenhouse told the court that not only did the business owners give permission for them to be there and ask for protection that night – which he had offered earlier in the day – Sal drove him, his friend Dominick Black and former Car Source worker Nick Smith to the particular property.

He said, ‘Sam and Sal thanked us for coming out to help and Sal said ‘Why don’t you guys hop in my car?’ He was going to drive us down to [another] Car Source lot.’

He said that he witnessed Sal give Nick Smith keys to the business – something which Khindri also denied under oath – and showed the men where ladders were kept so they could access the roof. Khindri also denied doing this.

He said, ‘He let us know where the power washers were and the hose hook ups. He showed Dominick Black and Nick Smith the two ladders that were there to get up on the roof.

‘I didn’t personally [use the ladders] but the people who were on the roof did.’

Before the jury were called in and ahead of his testimony Rittenhouse had sat, wide-eyed in the stand, assuring the judge that he felt all right, that his mind was clear, that he had not consumed alcohol or drugs and that he had decided that this was ‘a good thing to do under the circumstances.’

Attorney Mark Richards stood to confirm that he was acting on the advice of counsel.

Back on the stand after a brief break to compose himself Rittenhouse continued to narrate the events of the night – detailing how he was pursued and attacked first by Rosenbaum, then Huber and finally Grosskreutz.

He recalled that he felt trapped between Ziminiski and Rosenbaum and revealed that he had heard Ziminski tell Rosenbaum to, ‘Get him and kill him.’

He said that Rosenbaum threw something at him, he turned around but that it didn’t stop the other man who was running after him and gaining on him.

As he ran, Rittenhouse said, he heard a gun shot behind him, took a few steps and turned around to see that Rosenbaum was ‘about as far from me to where the judge is coming at me with his arms out in front of him.’

He said, ‘I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun.’

After he shot Rosenbaum he said, ‘I ran around to see if I could help Mr Rosenbaum.

‘Mr McGinniss tore off his helmet slammed it on the ground, took off his shirt. I don’t remember what he said, I was in shock.’

Rittenhouse said he called his friend Black and told him he had just shot somebody, that he had to shoot him.

He said, ‘I heard people say, ‘Get his ass.’ And thought the safest option was to reach the police line and turn himself but that as he tried to so do he was being chased ‘by a mob.’

He said, ‘People were screaming and saying, ‘Cranium him! Kill him!’

‘I didn’t do anything wrong I defended myself.’

He said that the next thing he remembered was Anthony Huber striking him on the head with a skateboard. He batted it away with his arm and continued on but, light-headed and in shock, he said, he stumbled and fell.

He told the court that as he was running he was hit twice on the head with some sort or rock.

According to Rittenhouse, ‘As I’m on the ground thre are people around me. The last person, I don’t know his name [went to kick me]. As his face made contact with my face I fired two shots at him.

‘I thought he would stomp on my face if I didn’t.’

Neither shot hit the man known only as ‘jump-kick man’ in court.

Immediately after, he said, Huber came at him again – grabbing for his gun.

He said, ‘I can feel it pulling away from me and I can feel the strap coming off my body. I fire one shot.’

Struggling to get up he said he saw Grosskreutz coming towards him, initially with his hands up. He said that he lowered his weapon and looked down but, he added, ‘Mr Grosskreutz lunges at me with his pistol pointed directly at my head.’

He recalled, ‘He is standing – what I remember is our feet were touching

My rifle is down, his hands are up. His pistol is in his hand and then Mr Grosskreutz looks at me and that’s when Mr Grosskreutz brings his arm down…with me on the ground and his pistol is pointed at me and that’s when I shoot him. Once.’

Surrounded by chaos and potential threats he said, ‘I start walking towards the police line to turn myself into the police.

I run and walk, I put my hands up. I can’t really hear anything, my vision is very narrow. I see the flashing lights, I occasionally tried to move my rifle to put it behind me so the police didn’t see me as a threat.

‘I walk towards the window of the police cruiser and tell the officer, ‘I just shot somebody. I just shot somebody,’ and the officer says

‘Get the f*** back or you’re going to get pepper sprayed. Go home, go home, go home.’

Ultimately Rittenhouse was driven home by Dominick Black and then taken by his mother to Antioch Police Department, Illinois.

He said ‘I’m in shock I don’t really remember what was happening.

I was freaking out. I was just attacked my head was spinning.

‘The Kenosha police dept was barricaded off with a fence so I went to the nearest police department I knew of which was in Antioch by my house.’

As he sat waiting for officers to arrive from Kenosha to question him he said he was, ‘vomiting’ and having ‘panic attacks.’

Gaige Grosskreutz’s former roommate told the court that he ‘made it all up’ when he claimed that Grosskreutz’s ‘only regret’ was ‘not killing’ Kyle Rittenhouse the night he was shot by the teen.

Jacob Marshall was the first witness called by Rittenhouse’s defense Wednesday morning and made the startling assertion under direct examination by Corey Chirafisi.

Marshall posted a picture on Facebook of himself with Grosskreutz in the hospital the day after he was shot in the hand by Rittenhouse.

The post, which he has since deleted, was displayed on large screens in court.

It showed the two men posing up alongside Marshall’s post, ‘I just talked to Gaige Grosskreutz. His only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun before emptying the entire mag into him.’

Yet today Marshall said that he ‘100 percent lied’ when he wrote that post.

He said, ‘I made a bad remark. I was trying to stick up for my friend. He didn’t know what was going on.’

Chirafisi pointed out that he was not sticking up for Grosskreutz but ‘equating what he said.’

Marshall insisted, ‘Those words never came out of my friend’s mouth…It was bad judgement.’

He also denied deleting the post because he knew it would be bad for his friend’s credibility as a witness in these proceedings

Grosskreutz himself denied uttering the words when he was called as a witness for the state last week.

Yet under cross examination Grosskreutz’s testimony was severely undermined as it emerged that the trained paramedic, who had been painted as a non-partisan and peaceable by the state, had failed to mention that he was armed with a Glock, or that he was pointing it at Rittenhouse when he was shot, in either his police statement or two lawsuits which he has brought in relation to the case.

On Tuesday, the court heard how  Kyle Rittenhouse stammered, ‘My God my life might be over,’ as he admitted that he had ‘shot someone’ on the night of August 25, 2020.

Stammering, shaking, sweating and pale, Rittenhouse hammered on the door of a local business that he and armed vigilantes had been protecting that night, before ‘falling in’ and making his confession.

This was the testimony of JoAnn Fiedler Tuesday afternoon as the defense began their case.

Fiedler was the second witness they called. She told the court that Rittenhouse had ‘fallen into her’ as she had opened the door to the Car Source business that she and others were protecting that night.

Amid powerful testimony she explained that she was there as a member of United Citizens for Patriotism, a group that she had founded in the wake of the civil unrest last summer.

She said, ‘I understood BLM and we were all with them and then they started destroying their own communities and there was a 71-year-old shop owner beaten down…well I wasn’t for that at all.’

She said she had formed United Citizens for Patriotism to show support for the police, emergency workers and ‘the country.’

She said, ‘We just stood with our flags and let everybody know we were thinking of them.’

The prosecution rested its case Tuesday after a morning during which the jury saw gruesome images of the bodies of the two men killed by Rittenhouse.

Prosecutor Binger made his announcement after the jury had been dismissed for lunch and at the close of testimony from forensic pathologist Dr. Doug Kelly who performed autopsies on both Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.

Images of Anthony Huber, the skateboarder who attempted to wrestled Rittenhouse’s gun from him as he lay on his back on the street, were the first to be shown on the sixth day of the trial.

Huber was killed by a single shot to the chest, Dr. Doug Kelly said. He told how the bullet, shot at close range, had torn through both of his lungs before causing devastating damage to his heart.

The bullet did not exit his body, Dr. Kelly told the court, but lodged in his right collar bone having entered his body by his left nipple.

The stark pictures showed Huber as he lay after medics’ failed attempts to resuscitated him – the defibrillator pads still stuck to his chest and side, a plastic gel patch put in place in a futile bid to stem the fatal hemorrhaging that flooded his body cavity.

Next the state turned their attention to Joseph Rosenbaum – shot four times by Rittenhouse.

According to Dr. Kelly two of the bullets that hit Rosenbaum exited and two did not. 

The pathologist recovered a bullet from Rosenbaum’s right buttock where a bullet that had entered next to his right groin, fracturing his pelvis, had nearly exited.

He explained that from the stippling – the residue of soot and unburned gun-powder emitted by a gunshot – visible on Rosenbaum’s abdomen he estimated Rosenbaum’s distance from the muzzle of the weapon as approximately four feet.

Rosenbaum was also hit on the left hand, his palm torn up, his index finger shattered and middle finger torn up its ligament exposed. The doctor said this was associated with a superficial wound to his left thigh, speculating that the bullet hit Rosenbaum’s hand, ricocheted off the pavement then rebounded to graze his thigh.

Rosenbaum also sustained a superficial graze to his head. But the lethal shot was one that entered his chest, downward – right to left and back to front – and traveled down through his lung, diaphragm, liver and finally his right flank where the bullet was collected. This, Dr. Kelly said, was the fatal wound.

As the doctor spoke the jurors were shown an array of grizzly pictures of Rosenbaum’s pale and lifeless body and the wounds that he sustained that night.

His neck was supported by a surgical brace. His bloody and damaged hand was frozen in a partial grasp, the exit wound between his index finger and thumb clearly visible.

They were also shown the entrance wound to his right groin, surrounded by stippling and murky with blood.

Perhaps most disturbing was the picture of Mr. Rosenbaum’s head and back with swirls of purple bruising, blood and stippling around the fatal wound at his midline clearly visible.