The AR-15 rifle that American Kyle Rittenhouse used to shoot three men – two of whom died – during an anti-racist act in Kenosha, in the United States, in 2020, will be destroyed, according to judge Bruce Schroeder this Friday (28) .
Rittenhouse, an 18-year-old white man, was acquitted in November after his lawyers claimed he acted in self-defense. The case polarized the US, and the teenager became something of a conservative political icon – he even met former President Donald Trump, who called him “a very good young man”.
The young man asked, in a January 19 court case, that the gun be returned to him, along with several other items that were taken while he was on trial. He was not present at Friday’s hearing, when part of the request was denied. The Kenosha crime lab is expected to destroy the rifle later this year, probably in April, the prosecution said.
Rittenhouse’s defense claimed that he wanted the rifle, as well as the other items, precisely to destroy them, so they would not be used as “political symbols”. Lawyer Mark Richards told reporters that no one should profit from it and said people had contacted his client to buy the gun, according to reports by the Associated Press news agency.
The gun was purchased for Rittenhouse when he was 17 years old by a friend, Dominic Black, then 18. Black was arrested and charged with two counts for supplying a gun to a minor, resulting in the deaths. A few weeks ago, he accepted a plea bargain and received a fine of US$ 2,000 (R$ 10,700).
Also on Friday, Judge Schroeder also ordered that the amount of US$ 2 million (R$ 10.7 million) paid by Rittenhouse as bail be returned. The money was raised through donations from conservatives across the country, in a campaign organized to defend the youth. The amount will be divided between the lawyers, the foundation created to collect bail donations and the American actor Ricky Schroder, from the series “Silver Spoons”, who donated to the defense fund.
The shots fired by the young man during the anti-racist demonstration resulted in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz was wounded. Rittenhouse was acquitted of two counts of murder, one of attempted murder and two of threat to public safety, which was greeted with indignation by social movements and political figures linked to the American left.
The acts in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in which the case took place, began after Jacob Blake, a black man, was shot in the back by a white agent during a police stop two days earlier, in an action filmed by witnesses. Three months earlier, George Floyd had been murdered by another white police officer.
Rittenhouse lived in Antioch, Illinois, about 33 km from Kenosha. He crossed the border to the neighboring state in response to the call of civic groups, formed mostly by white people, against the anti-racist agenda of the protests.
Footage recorded by witnesses captured the moment protesters tried to disarm Rittenhouse after he shot one of them. The teenager then fired point-blank shots at his pursuers, which resulted in both deaths.
The judicial process surrounding the case had already gained projection at other times. One of them was when Judge Bruce Schroeder, the same person responsible for the decision on the destruction of the weapon, ruled that the prosecution could not refer to those shot as victims, because, in his view, the term is loaded with pre-trial. In contrast, prosecutor Thomas Binger asked that Rittenhouse’s defense be prohibited from describing Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz as “troublemakers, looters or arsonists”.
