Trial Halted After Kyle Rittenhouse Breaks Down On The Stand: “I WAS DEFENDING MYSELF”

Rittenhouse continues to testify about the night he fatally shoots two people, wounds a third

Grosskreutz’s hands are up, Rittenhouse says, but Rittenhouse knows he is armed.

By: FOX News,November 10, 2021:

Rittenhouse: “My rifle is down, his hands are up. His pistol is in his hand. And then, Mr. Grosskreutz looks at me … Grosskretuz brings his arm down … with me on the ground. His pistol is pointed at me. And that’s when I shoot him. Once.”

Rittenhouse: “He’s no longer a threat to me. There’s only one person in front of me and his hands are up … I get onto one knee …” Rittenhouse describes how the man in front of him then backs up and he does not shoot him.

Rittenhouse says he then moved toward the police line “to turn myself in” to the police there.

With his arms up, Rittenhouse says his vision is “narrow” and he had tried to move his rifle behind him “so police didn’t see me as a threat.”

Rittenhouse continues: “I tell the officer, ‘ I just shot somebody.’ The officer says, ‘Get the f— back or you’re going to get pepper sprayed. Go home. Go home. Go home.'”

He later describes how he was in shock and adds: “I was just attacked. My head was spinning.”

He leaves Kenosha, being driven by his friend Dominick Black, and goes home before leaving with his mother for to the Antioch Police Department in his hometown.

His mother drives him to Antioch Police Department, where he arrives “about an hour after the shooting.”

Rittenhouse: “My head was spinning and I couldn’t think clearly at that point.”

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13 min(s) ago

Kyle Rittenhouse describes moments of shootings

“Anthony Huber … as I’m running past Anthony Huber … he’s holding a skateboard like a baseball bat ,” Rittenhouse said. He says Huber swings the skateboard at his arm, it hits Rittenhouse as he tries to block it before the skateboard goes flying.

Rittenhouse: “As I’m on the ground, there are people around me. I don’t recall how many.”

He says he recalls moving his rifle in his direction. Most moved except for one.

“The last person, I don’t know his name. I don’t think he was ever identified. Jumps at me with his, he was wearing boots, I believe … as his boot is making contact with my face, I fire two shots at him.”

When asked why he fires two shots: “He would have stomped my face in if I didn’t fire.”

Huber, Rittenhouse says, “runs up, as I’m getting up, he strikes me in the neck with the skateboard a second time. He grabs my gun … I can feel the strap coming off my body.”

“I fire one shot,” Rittenhouse says.

“As I’m lowering my weapon, I look down, and then Mr. Grosskreutz, he lunges at me … with his pistol pointed directly at my head,” Rittenhouse says.

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17 min(s) ago

Rittenhosue describes how man told someone to ‘Get him,’ and ‘Kill him’

Back on the stand, Rittenhouse recalls how “Mr. Ziminski instructed Mr. Rosenbaum to ‘get him’ and ‘kill him.'”

“I turn around for a second … I point my gun at Mr. Rosenbaum.” He says that doing so did not stop Rosenbaum.

“After he throws the bag and he continues to run he’s gaining steam on me. A gunshot is fired from behind me, directly behind me.”

As Rittenhouse takes steps, he turns around he says.

After describing Rosenbaum chasing him, Rittenhouse says: “I remember his hands on the barrel of my gun,”

As why he doesn’t keep running. He says, “there was no space for me to continue to run to.”

“I shoot him,” he says when asked what he did as he say Rosenbaum lunging toward him.

After shooting Rosebaum, Rittenhouse describes how he can hear people saying, “Get him.”

He later adds: “A mob was chasing me.” I continue torun after hearing people say, people were saying, ‘Cranium him … get him … kill him.”

He adds he was “trying to get to the police.”

Rittenhouse: “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was defending myself.”

Rittenhouse breaks down on the stand

Kyle Rittenhouse sobs on the stand, at times uncontrollably, before the judge calls for a break

Rittenhouse sobs as he begins to recall how the events unfolded in the moments before he began firing his weapon.

Rittenhouse was describing how a man named Joshua Ziminski “steps toward me with a pistol in his hand. And as I’m, as I’m walking towards to put out the fire, I drop the fire extinguisher and I, I take a step back.”

When asked his plan after stepping back from Ziminski, Rittenhouse responds: “My plan is to get out of that situation and go back … to where the Car Source lot #2 was.”Defense attorney asks, was he able to get back?

“I wasn’t … once I take that step back I look over my shoulder and Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Rosebaum was now running from my right side and I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Ziminski and there were … there were three people right there,” he said in tears.

“That’s when I run …”

After crying for a short period, the judge calls for a 10-minute break.

When asked by his defense attorney, Rittenhouse says he is not an emergency medical technician, but has first-aid training

Rosenbaum, one of the men who was fatally shot, threatened to kill Rittenhouse: accused shooter

Kyle Rittenhouse testifies at his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP)

 

Joseph Rosenbaum, one of the two men who was fatally shot on Aug. 25, 2020, threatened to kill Rittenhouse or the people he was with earlier in the night, Rittenhouse testifies.

When asked if there was friction between protesters and Rittenhouse and his group earlier in the night, Rittenhouse said “No,” and added that the person who had “attacked” him first “threatened to kill me twice.”

He later confirmed the person he was speaking about was Rosenbaum.

Speaking about the first threat, Rittenhouse said the first threat was directed at him and Ryan Balch, one of the people he was with. The pair was in in the area of 59th Street and Sheridan “and Mr. Rosenahum was walking with a steel chain and he had a blue mask around his face and he was just mad about something.”

Speaking to Rittenhouse and Balch, Rosenbaum said, “If I catch any of you f—— alone I’m going to f—— kill you … it was directed at both of us I believe,” Rittenhouse recalls.

Rittenhouse said the second threat was outside of one of the Car Source locations. Rittenhouse says Rosenbaum was “screaming” at the other people from his group: “He was screaming, I’m going to cut your f——- hearts out and kill you n-words.

Kyle Rittenhouse is sworn in before he testifies at his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool Photo via AP)

When asked by defense attorney Mark Richards why Rittenhouse owned a bullet proof vest, Rittenhouse responded that the vest was issued to him by a police department, adding that he did not purchase the item himself.

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1 hour(s) ago

Kyle Rittenhouse called to testify

 

 

Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand on Wednesday in his ongoing trial in Kenosha County court.

Rittenhouse is charged with two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, recklessly endangering safety and illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18.

He was 17 when he and at least one friend said they traveled to the Wisconsin city from Illinois to protect local businesses and provide medical aid after two nights of businesses being looted

Rittenhouse’s attorneys have argued repeatedly that their client was acting in self-defense, and fired his semi-automatic rifle because he was being chased or faced with a gun.

The prosecution has tried to depict Rittenhouse as the person who instigated the events, including by emphasizing that he is the only person to have shot someone during the night of unrest.