In his first interview since being acquitted last Friday (19), Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three men and killed two of them during an anti-racist act in the US in August 2020, told Fox News TV channel that he did not. is racist and supports the Black Lives Matter (Black Lives Matter) movement.
The 18-year-old white man spoke to conservative presenter Tucker Carlson in an interview aired Monday night.
“This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defence,” he said. “I’m not a racist person. I support the Black Lives Matter movement, I support peaceful protests, I believe things need to change.”
Kyle Rittenhouse was tried for shooting an AR-15 rifle at Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz — the first two died from their wounds. At the time, he was 17 years old.
The acts in Kenosha, Wisconsin, began after Jacob Blake, a black man, was shot in the back by a white agent during a police raid two days earlier, in an action filmed by witnesses. Three months earlier, George Floyd had been murdered by another white policeman.
Rittenhouse lived in Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles from Kenosha. He crossed the border into the neighboring state in response to the call of groups formed mainly by white people, who organized themselves on social networks to summon activists against the protest agenda. These groups claimed to protect property from looting and depredation during the demonstrations.
Images recorded by witnesses recorded the moment when protesters tried to disarm Rittenhouse after he shot one of them. The teenager then fires again at the group.
In the interview, Rittenhouse stated that he wished the episode in Kenosha had not happened. “I did [atirei contra os manifestantes], we cannot change that. But the level of polarization this has taken is absolutely sick. Right or left, people are using me for a cause,” he said.
For him, “it was not Kyle Rittenhouse at the Wisconsin trial, but the right to self-defence,” and “if convicted no one would have the privilege of defending their right to life.”
He added that he “has been extremely maligned” and that his lawyers will take care of that, indicating that he should start filing suits. Rittenhouse said he plans to move to some Midwestern US state and start law school — and no longer nursing, as he planned before the episode.
At the trial, Rittenhouse had said his goal was to provide medical help to the wounded — even though he was carrying an AR-15 rifle, prohibited for anyone under 18 in Wisconsin. When questioned, he replied that he had taken the weapon for his own protection.
Fox News, the conservative American TV network, said it would premiere a documentary about the case in December.
Rittenhouse was cleared of two counts of murder, one of attempted murder and two of a threat to public safety. Dozens of protesters protested outside the courthouse, some with posters in support of the defendant and others expressing disappointment.
President Joe Biden, who during the election campaign posted a video on Twitter that appeared to link Rittenhouse to white supremacists, sought to pacify the post-trial situation. “The verdict may make a lot of Americans angry and worried, but we need to take the jury’s word for it,” he said. “I ask everyone to express their opinions in peace, within the law.”
The acquittal, however, was met with indignation by many on the left-wing political spectrum. “It is unscrupulous that our justice system allows an armed vigilante… to go free,” the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of black parliamentarians, said in a statement.
Conservatives, on the other hand, saw the verdict as validation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which gives Americans the right to bear arms. Congressman Madison Cawthorn, the Republican Representative from North Carolina, wrote on Instagram: “Kyle Rittenhouse is not guilty, my friends. You have the right to defend yourself. Be armed, be dangerous and be moral.”
Ahmaud Arbery case
This Tuesday (23) should begin the deliberation of the jury responsible for the case of three white men who chased and killed, last year, Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man who left home on a Sunday afternoon to run in a mostly white neighborhood in the suburb of the city of Brunswick, Georgia.
The case took place in February 2020. Arbery was unarmed and was killed by a shotgun blast fired by a resident, who was chasing him along with his father and a neighbor.
Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include murder, aggravated assault and imprisonment. They claim self-defense.
“They made the decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in his sidewalks because he was a black man running down the street,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said in previous arguments. They killed him “not because he was a threat to them, but because he wouldn’t stop talking to them,” he said.
The defendants said they thought Arbery might be behind recent robberies that happened in the neighborhood, but no evidence emerged of crimes committed by the victim during his frequent runs around the neighborhood.
The jury in the case is composed of 11 white people and one black person, which was also a reason for protests. In another case that sparked protests against police violence and racism, the death of George Floyd asphyxiated by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, the composition of the jury was different: there were four black, six white and two multiracial jurors.
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