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.
I would certainly consider roaming the streets openly wielding a firearm to fall under a reasonable definition of “provocation”. It is unreasonable to expect a person on the street to distinguish between an active shooter and a “good guy with a gun”.
It’s almost like the “good guy with a gun” is an idiotic idea which turns situations into powder kegs of confusion and violence where everyone thinks they’re the good guy and bullets start flying.
Who cares what you would consider provocation? The fact is no one there on that day felt provoked by it. No one reacted negatively to his arrival while obviously visibly armed, nor his walking around visibly armed, for hours, while he handed out water bottle and gave first aid to people. And why is it that the first person to react negatively to him was a maniac who pissed because the dumpster fire he set was extinguished? His rage had literally nothing to do with Rittenhouse’s weapon.
If the mere existence of the gun was so provocative, explain why no one there gave a shit about it. Reconcile your assertion with the facts, if you can.
That’s not really relevant, because Huber and Grosskreutz’s actions are completely nonsensical regardless of whether they assessed Rittenhouse as one or the other accurately. They both decided to try and kill Rittenhouse, and he prevented them from doing so, absolutely justified in defending his life against two more attempted murders, after already being forced to do so once, with Rosenbaum.
Not to mention that Rittenhouse was moving TOWARD the police line to report what had just happened with Rosenbaum, verbally announcing that he was doing so, when the other two decided they wanted to kill him instead.
You and I have different definitions of the word “fact”.
Fact: On all of the video there is of him preceding Rosenbaum’s attack, no one is reacting in a way that indicates that they feel provoked by his armed presence.
Fact: You’re imbuing this magical inherent provocation based on literally nothing. It’s what you want to be true, so that you can rationalize your baseless narrative.
Woosh