"Well," McGinniss replied, "he said, 'F- you.' And then he reached for the weapon."īut McGinniss also appeared to boost the prosecution's case when he said he had a sense that something bad could happen that night because of all the guns in the area. In an attempt to undo some of the damage done by his own witness, prosecutor Thomas Binger said McGinniss' testimony about what Rosenbaum was intending to do was "complete guesswork." It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video. The killing of Rosenbaum, 36, has emerged as one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. The charges against Rittenhouse also include illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18. Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defence, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him. Rittenhouse is white, as were those he shot. Ryan Balch, a former Army infantryman who carried an AR-style rifle that night and walked around patrolling the streets with Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum was "hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner," including trying to set fires and throwing rocks.īalch said he got between Rosenbaum and another man while Rosenbaum was trying to start a fire, and Rosenbaum got angry, shouting, "If I catch any of you guys alone tonight I'm going to f- kill you!"īalch said that Rittenhouse was within earshot and that he believed the threat was aimed at both of them. "I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon," McGinniss said. Richie McGinniss, who was recording events on a cellphone that night for the conservative website The Daily Caller, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot that night, was killed after chasing down Rittenhouse and making a lunge for the gun. The onetime youth police cadet had gone to Kenosha with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle and a medical kit in what he said was an effort to safeguard property from violent protests that broke out over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white Kenosha police officer. Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with shooting three men, two of them fatally, in the summer of 2020. The testimony at Rittenhouse's murder trial Thursday came from two witnesses who were called to the stand by the prosecution but gave accounts often more favourable to the defence in the politically polarizing case. The rapid sequence in which Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men on the streets of Kenosha was set off by the confrontational behavior of the first man, who threatened to kill Rittenhouse and others in his group and later grabbed for the 17-year-old's weapon right before he was shot, witnesses testified.
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