By Faith Karimi | CNN
Just before midnight on Tuesday, a young man holding a long gun in the dark streets of Kenosha in a back-to-back baseball cap and a green T-shirt wandered off.
Protestants in the city of Wisconsin are demanding justice after an officer shot local resident Jacob Blake seven times in the back while his children watched from his car. When the 29-year-old Black man in the hospital fought for his life after the shooting on Sunday, people marched, sang and asked for three days why. At times, protesters and armed civilians stood in front.
Then things took a deadly turn.
The teenager with the long pistol struck with people near a car dealer and open fire, allegedly killing two people and injuring a third, says a criminal complaint. Even as police and emergency vehicles rushed to the scene and chaotic videos of the fatal encounter appeared on social media, the armed suspect slipped unnoticed past a group of officers. He was arrested 30 miles away in Antioch, Illinois.
Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, is charged with murdering Anthony M. Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum. Before the shooting, he told a journalist who claims he was an opaque drug, says a criminal complaint.
How the deadly confrontation began
At about 11.45pm on Tuesday – hours after the departure at 8pm – Rittenhouse was walking down the streets at the car dealership, holding what investigators later decided to be “a Smith & Wesson AR-15 .223 rifle”, the criminal complaint says.
Social media accounts believed to have heard him portray a young white man with affinity for guns who supports “Blue Lives Matter” and President Donald Trump. A video posted to a Snapchat account that he believed he heard placed him on the scene of protests Tuesday night. The clips show a few seconds from the point of view of someone who has a long gun and police announcements can be heard over speakers.
During those demonstrations, the complaint alleges that Rittenhouse collided with people who had gathered at the auto dealership for unspecified reasons. Rosenbaum was unarmed and threw an object that appeared to him to be a plastic bag and was missing, according to the complaint.
Rosenbaum and the suspect moved across the parking lot and appeared to be nearby when loud bangs suddenly rang and Rosenbaum fell to the ground, according to the complaint.
When Rosenbaum lay on the ground, the suspect made a call on his cell phone and said, “I just killed one” when he left, the complaint alleges. His friend received a call from him at 11:46 p.m., saying he shot one, an investigator in the complaint said.
Rosenbaum was pronounced dead at 12:47 a.m. Wednesday.
Two more people are being shot
A journalist who tracked down the suspect and the victim at the time provided investigators with more details about what happened. He told investigators that the victim 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.
“It can be heard that a person is shouting what sounds,” Save him! “Another person can be heard shouting something like, ‘Hey, he shot him!’ Claims the criminal complaint. In another video, another person shouts, ‘Get him! Get that guy!’
The suspect stumbled and fell as people chased him, and as he lay on the ground, a second person identified as Huber approached him with a skateboard in his right hand, the complaint says.
“When Huber reaches the suspect, it turns out that he sticks his left hand to the suspect’s gun when the skateboard makes contact with the suspect’s left shoulder. … The suspect rolls to his left and as Huber looks like the gun “the gun is aimed at Huber’s body. The suspect then fires one round … Huber stumbles away, takes several steps and then falls to the ground,” the complaint says.
After shooting Huber, the suspect points his rifle at a third man who arrives at the suspect, later identified as Gaige Grosskreutz, the complaint says. He was shot in the right arm and takes off in the opposite direction and called for a medicine while the suspect left, the complaint alleges.
Rittenhouse faces two criminal charges of murder in the deaths of Rosenbaum and Huber, and one crime attempted murder charge in the Grosskreutz incident. Court data show that he is also accused of possessing a dangerous weapon while under the age of 18, which is a misdemeanor.
Wisconsin is a state with open arms, but children under the age of 18 are not allowed to wear guns in public.
The scheduled hearing of Rittenhouse is Friday morning.
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