Kenosha police responded Tuesday night to questions about their interactions with the shooter. According to witness accounts and video footage, police apparently let the gunman run past them and leave the scene with a gun over his shoulder and his hands in the air as members of the crowd called for him to be arrested for ‘. t he had shot people.
As the gunman managed to slip away, Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth described a chaotic, very stressful scene, with a lot of radio traffic and people screaming, singing and running – circumstances he said could be “tunnel vision” cause among law enforcement officers,
Video made before the shooting shows police throwing bottled water from an armored vehicle and thanking civilians armed with long guns running down the streets. One of them seems to be the gunman.
U.S. national and state chapters on civil liberties on Thursday called for the dismissal of Chiefs of Police Beth and Kenosha Dan Miskinis over their treatment of Blake’s death and subsequent protests.
Rittenhouse, from Antioch, Illinois, about 15 miles from Kenosha, was arrested Wednesday in Illinois. He was assigned a public defender in Illinois for a hearing Friday on his move to Wisconsin. Under Wisconsin law, anyone 17 or older is treated as an adult in the criminal justice system.
Rittenhouse’s lawyer, Lin Wood, said the teen acted in self-defense. Mobile footage shows the shooter being chased by someone to a party of a used car before shots are heard and the person is killed. The shooter then walks down the street where he is being chased by several people shouting that he just shot someone. He stumbles after being approached by multiple people and fires, killing another man and injuring a third.
“From my point of view, it is important that the message is clear to other Americans who are being attacked that there will be legal resources available if false charges are brought against them,” he said. “Americans should never be deterred from exercising their right to self-defense.”
The streets of Kenosha were calm Thursday after a night of peaceful protests and for the first time since Blake’s shooting no widespread unrest. There were no groups on Wednesday night patrolling the streets of Kenosha with long guns and Protestants staying away from a courthouse that was the site from a distance by law enforcement.
During unrest the previous two nights dozens of fires were set on fire and businesses were devastated and destroyed.
“Tonight was very peaceful,” Beth said during a news conference Thursday in which he and other city officials declined to answer questions. “Tuesday night, not so peaceful, but it was not too bad.”
A spokesman for the sheriff’s department did not immediately return a message seeking clarification on Beth’s comments.
Protestants marched along the intersection where two people were killed Tuesday night, stopping to pray and lay flowers.
The two men killed were Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, of Kenosha, and Anthony Huber, 26, of Silver Lake, about 15 miles west of the city.
A third man was injured. Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, was volunteering as a doctor when he was shot, said Bethany Crevensten, who was also among the group of about two dozen activists.
“He was a hero and he is a hero,” she said.
Grosskreutz, of West Allis, about 30 miles northwest of Kenosha, is recovering from surgery and has not yet given any interviews, Crevensten said.
Blake was shot seven times in the back on Sunday when he bent over in his SUV, in which three of his children were sitting.
State authorities have identified the officer who shot Blake as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the Kenosha Police Department.
Authorities said Sheskey was among officers responding to a domestic dispute, although they did not say whether Blake was part of the dispute. Sheskey shot Blake while holding on to his shirt after officers unsuccessfully used a Taser on him, the Wisconsin Justice Department said. State agents later recovered a knife from the floor on the side of the driver of the car, the department said. State authorities did not say Blake threatened anyone with a knife.
Ben Crump, the lawyer for Blake’s family, said Tuesday that it would “take a miracle” for Blake to walk again. He called for the arrest of Sheskey and for those involved to lose their jobs. State officials have not filed any charges.
In solidarity, Milwaukee Bucks players on Wednesday refused to play their playoff game, temporarily stopping the NBA season. They would restart Friday. Three Major League Baseball games were delayed because players refused to take the field and several NFL teams canceled their Thursday practice sessions.
Also Thursday, Wisconsin Lutheran College said about 40 miles from Kenosha that it began canceling a planned set-up Saturday beginning by Vice President Mike Pence, citing the unrest.
Four groups representing Wisconsin sheriffs and police departments on Thursday urged Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to stop making “premature, judgmental, (and) inflammatory” remarks about shooting Blake who they say “add only ‘ the anger and division of an already dangerous situation. “
Evers has said he stands with anyone who demands justice, self-sufficiency and accountability and against the excessive use of force against Black people.
The governor has authorized the deployment of 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha, doubling the number of troops in the city from 100,000. Guard troops from Arizona, Michigan and Alabama came to Wisconsin to help, Evers said Thursday. He did not say how much.
In Washington, the Department of Justice said it had sent in more than 200 federal agents from the FBI, US Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The White House said up to 2,000 National Guard troops would be made available. The Department of Justice also announced that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI would conduct a civil law investigation into Blake’s shooting, in collaboration with Wisconsin law enforcement organizations.
