A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.

Hancock nonetheless said he initially believed Rittenhouse’s claims of self-defense when he first relayed his story about fatally shooting Rosenbaum and Huber. Yet that changed when he later became aware of text messages that surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the men slain in Kenosha demanding wrongful death damages from Rittenhouse.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    He created the situation he needed to escape from. That’s textbook offense. You don’t get to create confrontation and call it defense.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Crossing state lines specifically to confront protestors with a deadly weapon very much is.

        • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Crossing state lines

          You mean traveling one town over, where he used to work and where his dad lives, an area he had exponentially greater ties to than any of the people who attacked him did?

          Gee, wonder why you don’t say it that way. Could it be because you’re trying to make it sound like he traveled far out of his way to an unfamiliar area, because that helps your narrative about him ‘being where he doesn’t belong’ (while conveniently not considering whether any of his attackers ‘belonged’ there)? Hoping that the technically-true “cross state lines” obscures the fact that he lived on the border of the other state?

          You’re absolutely transparent. Don’t try this disingenuous garbage on someone who knows the facts and knows about your pathetic rhetorical maneuvers.

          specifically to confront protestors with a deadly weapon

          He confronted literally no one. And no, existing while armed in a state where open carry is legal doesn’t count.

          He wasn’t even counter-protesting!

          Do you know what “confront” means?

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Funny we have him on text saying that’s what he was doing and on video doing exactly that.

            I don’t think I’m the one in need of a dictionary.

            Oh wow at first I completely missed the totally original claim that the protestors weren’t from the area. Tell Fox news I said hi.

            • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Funny we have him on text saying that’s what he was doing and on video doing exactly that.

              Lie. I defy you to link to that video, with timestamp, of him “doing exactly that”.

              the totally original claim that the protestors weren’t from the area

              It’s not a ‘claim’. It’s a fact.