The defendant is giving his account of the night he fatally shot two people during unrest in Kenosha. He says he didn’t go looking for trouble.
Kyle Rittenhouse, the armed Illinois teenager who killed two people and wounded another during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer, went on trial Monday on homicide charges.
Rittenhouse, now 18, is accused of fatally shooting Anthony M. Huber, 26, and Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27.
Here’s a recap of how the night of Aug. 25, 2020, unfolded:
The violence in Kenosha, a city of about 100,000 people, came amid a tense summer of protests and unrest as masses of people denounced how American police treated Black people.
Rittenhouse, from nearby Antioch, had an affinity for guns and supported “Blue Lives Matter” and then-President Donald Trump, according to his social media accounts.
On Aug. 23, 2020, a Kenosha Police officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, multiple times in the back. The shooting was captured on cellphone video and quickly spread online, leading to outrage and protests as well as violence and destruction over the next few days.
Some people – including a number who did not live in Kenosha – took the matter of safety into their own hands. Rittenhouse was among them.
Wearing a green T-shirt and a backward baseball cap, the armed Rittenhouse walked the streets of the city on the night of Aug. 25 with a group of armed men, video and photos from the protests show. Hours after curfew, Rittenhouse was walking down the streets near a car dealership holding what investigators later determined to be “a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223 rifle,” the criminal complaint against him states.
The complaint says Rittenhouse clashed with people gathered near the car dealership for reasons not specified.
Rosenbaum was unarmed and threw an object that appeared to be a plastic bag at him and missed, according to the complaint. Rosenbaum and Rittenhouse moved across the parking lot and appeared to be in close proximity when loud bangs suddenly rang out and Rosenbaum fell to the ground, according to the complaint.
As Rosenbaum lay on the ground, Rittenhouse made a call on his cellphone and said, “I just killed somebody” as he ran away, the complaint alleges. A journalist who was following the suspect and the victim at the time provided investigators with more details on what happened. He told investigators the man shot was trying to get the suspect’s gun, according to the complaint.
Another video shows the suspect running from the scene followed by people in hot pursuit.
“A person can be heard yelling what sounds like, ‘Beat him up!’ Another person can be heard yelling what sounds like, ‘Hey, he shot him!'” the criminal complaint alleges. In another video, a person yells, “Get him! Get that dude!”
Rittenhouse tripped and fell as people chased him down, and as he lay on the ground, a person identified as Huber approached him with a skateboard in his right hand, the complaint says. Huber appeared to reach Rittenhouse’s gun with one hand as the skateboard hit the teen in the shoulder, the complaint states, and Rittenhouse then shot Huber.
Rittenhouse then pointed his gun at a third man, later identified as Grosskreutz, who was holding a handgun, the complaint states. He was shot in the right arm and took off in the opposite direction screaming for a medic while the defendant walked away, the complaint alleges.
Rittenhouse left the shooting scene still armed and walked toward officers with his hands up, but police passed by him without arresting him, video shows. He ultimately went home and turned himself in at his local police department the next morning.
He was extradited to Wisconsin to face charges and released after posting $2 million in bail
CNN’s Paul P. Murphy and Faith Karimi contributed to this report.
