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.
Wait are you trying to tell me that the kid who took a gun he didn’t own to a state he didn’t live in to shoot protestors he didn’t know ostensibly to protect businesses he’s unaffiliated with wanted to kill people?? Wow I am shocked. Shocked!
Honestly of course he wanted to murder people, anyone who disputes that is and has always been deliberately lying.
Edit: not a single inaccurate statement in my comment, but narrative-clingers gotta downvote because inconvenient facts just make them that mad, lol. Shameful.
Fact checking time~
The gun was not in his possession until the day after he arrived.
But that he previously worked in, and his father lived in. Not exactly a strange neighborhood.
It’s obvious he didn’t go there “to shoot protesters”, for several factual, verifiable reasons:
There are text records of the business requesting his help, and one of the co-owners of that business, after denying it, was seen taking a posed ‘thank you’ picture with him after they had spent some time at the dealership that day. The evidence is clear they were there because they were directly requested to be there.
Nope, but I can understand how you’d reach that conclusion, considering you have basically every relevant fact of the case wrong. That’s what happens when you get narratives from social media, instead of drawing conclusions based on facts and evidence. There’s a ton of hard video evidence, you know.
It’s funny that on the day the verdict was delivered, the megathreads on Reddit announcing it were full of people admitting coming to terms with the fact that it was ironclad self-defense, and that social media and sensationalized news sources had created a narrative that directly contradicted the facts. And now years later, the only people still really talking about that case are the ideologues on both wings still clinging so desperately to those bullshit narratives, still repeating the same easily-debunked talking points they were fed by their echo chamber of choice, that were debunked before the trial even began. Hell, you can still find people claiming all the people he shot were black, lol.
This case has become such a perfect litmus test for identifying ideologues over people who both care about what’s actually true, and are actually willing to inform themselves instead of just swallowing whatever talking points they’re fed. Especially considering how EASY it is to debunk the bullshit, in this particular case.
It almost makes me not want to correct the lies, to make sure I can keep easier tabs on the liars, lol.
Shoplifters and especially looters is a common rightwing racist buzzword used to justify them being violent. It was never truly his intention to go after looters, that was always a codeword. Please look into people who patrol after hurricanes for looters - it’s a racist idea and they are forming little KKK groups literally. They did that as well in Oregon during the Blue River fires and literally almost got themselves and others killed, protecting “property from looters” that was literally going to be burned up anyway, and there weren’t any looters!!! Can’t emphasize this enough, no looters, so they were just delaying people escaping at gunpoint. Also can’t emphasize enough that looting and stealing is nonviolent, whereas shooting someone to death is quite violent.
If Rittenhouse was explicitly supposed to protect a business from looters, he would have security guard clearances and a paper pay trail. No, he was there to be a violent, possibly racist, pos. Quite clearly.
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864818368/the-history-behind-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/looting-starts-shooting-starts.html
https://harvardpolitics.com/a-peoples-history-of-looting/
Nice work ignoring everything else and hyper-focusing on ‘he really meant black people when he said ‘shoplifters’, trust me’.
Meanwhile, none of his attackers were black either, lol.
Keep grasping at those straws.
Wdym? We are talking about his intent here, right? And YOU and the defense claim he was acting righteously because he was “stopping looters.” Well, if “stopping looters” is a codeword for an action which historically means “I’m going to go out and violently harm people that are black or poor or who fit my idea of a looter,” then it’s entirely relevant.
Yes, which is ultimately defined by his actions. If his actions contradict his words, you can’t pretend the words hold more weight than what he actually did.
Nothing he did that day in Kenosha supports the assumption that his intention was to go there and shoot anyone. Nothing. Period.
Uh, no, nobody claimed that. Did you even watch the trial?
His actions and words are not contradictory though. There’s no contradiction. He wants to hunt down people under the guise of “looters”, by his own texts, and this historically is a justification for violence in this country. Then he conducted violence. Where’s the contradiction?
Everything in his life for months indicates his intention that night was violence.
And then he…hunted down nobody. Aggressed on nobody. Fled as his first reaction every time unprovoked aggression came his way, instead of ever escalating. Only used his weapon when the alternative was literally to forfeit his own life.
“No contradiction”, huh? Are you that foolish to really think that, or that scummy to claim it, fully knowing how bullshit it is?
lol incredible
That’s a quite thorough debunk. Can you provide some sources for your claims?
Yeah… he was an idiot for choosing to bring a firearm near known civil unrest, but it was pretty clearly self-defense. I mean they ran after him and attempted to seize his firearm…
Pretty good case for gun control as a concept, though. Ultimately both parties were endangered and forced into action by fear for their lives by the fact that the firearm was in the situation to begin with. As a protestor, I’d fear for my life if an armed counter protestor showed up, cause you know the cops aren’t gonna keep you alive if that guy chooses to start shooting. But any action I could take to prevent that puts the firearm owner in a position to reasonably fear for their lives. The mere appearance of the firearm puts the situation on a path to escalation. Maybe lethal weapons shouldn’t be allowed casually in public.
I mean, you can say it was a bad choice to go, period, but choosing to be armed while he was there was absolutely correct, both in a vacuum and in hindsight. Rosenbaum likely would have killed or at least injured Rittenhouse if the same sequence of events went down, except with him being unarmed.
He was obviously, visibly armed with a long rifle the entire time he was there, but no one thought anything of it. He was walking around for hours doing his thing and nobody was freaking out. The first person TO freak on him, did so for a reason completely unrelated to him being armed, and it’s only that altercation that even got the other two attackers’ attention on him at all.
No. Rosenbaum, the catalyst for all this, was absolutely NOT “endangered and forced into action” nor had any reason to be in fear of his life, just because someone was armed in his vicinity, in a state where open carry is legal.
Rosenbaum was the aggressor, and he had zero justification for his aggression.
Rittenhouse was not a counter protestor. He did zero counter protesting. He was even handing out water bottles to, and performing basic first aid on request (he was walking around yelling “medic! friendly!” to let others know he was available for such), for protesters.
Despite how you would feel, you must contend with the fact that no one freaked out when Rittenhouse arrived, nor did they while he was walking around offering his ‘services’, even though he was very obviously armed with a long rifle the entire time. Given the fact that it’s a legal open carry state, I’m not surprised by this, but the fact is that his presence while armed was perceived as entirely mundane right up until Rosenbaum flipped out on him (again, for a reason that also had nothing to do with his gun).
I think anyone who claims open carrying a firearm doesn’t escalate a situation is either incredibly unaware, or intentionally ignorant. There’s a reason they teach about this sort of dynamic in policing and self-defense classes.
Rittenhouse defended himself reasonably, but absolutely escalated the situation by bringing a firearm to defend a local business, per his own testimony.
It’s much more likely that you just don’t live in an open carry state, so you’re projecting how you’d feel about it if it happened where you do live, unable to empathize with the fact that it’s much more mundane to someone who does live in a state with legal open carry.
How do you contend with the fact that nobody reacted negatively to his arrival, nor his presence over several hours? That’s the fact that your contention cannot escape. You can claim it’s inherently provocative/aggressive/escalatory to be armed there that day, but how do you explain that no one actually there gave a shit about it? No one ran screaming from him when he showed up. He was walking around giving first aid, handing out water bottles, extinguishing fires, all while obviously armed with a long rifle, and literally no one cared.
Even when someone DID react negatively to him, that reaction had literally NOTHING to do with his gun! Rosenbaum was pissed that the dumpster fire he set got put out!
Your claim that his being armed, in and of itself, escalated the situation, simply does not hold any water.
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Face facts.
Solid assumptions! I’m actually a former competition shooter at the state level, but never national. I personally own an AR-15 that I use at the range sometimes.
I won’t be replying anymore, because you’re clearly as blinded by ideology as the people you rail so hard against. I hope you’re a teenager that will one day look back on this mentality with a sense of personal growth.
Have a good one.
Shooting competitively is completely irrelevant to whether it’s mundane to see someone in a public place armed with a rifle, in public.
The fact that you still can’t get around, is that nobody in that area on that day in Kenosha was intimidated by Rittenhouse being there armed, neither on arrival, nor as he walked around with the gun on him the whole time. The fact that your REFUSE to even address this fact and instead try to evade it over and over proves that you know it’s a brick wall your assumption runs smack into.
Stop being such an intellectual coward, and admit your argument holds no water.
Bullshit, I’m the one stating facts and you’re the one insisting your baseless assumptions are true, even when there is evidence directly contradicting it.
You’re just desperately trying to rationalize your unwillingness to confront reality honestly, by constantly repeating the same nonsense.
I’m only surprised you didn’t bring up that he killed a registered sex offender. His defenders usually think that’s relevant for some reason.
Most pushing back against the false narrative don’t actually think it’s relevant, vis a vis self-defense, but generally they consider it a bonus.
I know I’m not mourning Rosenbaum. Not only is he 100% responsible for his own death, having taken several completely irrationally-aggressive actions that collectively led to that end, but he just happens to be a five-time child rapist? Yeah, not exactly shedding tears for him over here.
I guess I had to prompt you.
Can’t help but notice you’ve not shown any of what I said to be inaccurate.
Cool. I had no intention of doing that. I just wanted to see if you’d do what I thought you’d do. You did.
Check out the master manipulator, bringing up a topic and then getting a reply on that topic.
lol
I didn’t manipulate you into replying the way I knew you would. You just did what his defenders always do.
I mean he did, but he both didn’t know that at the time and it’s not relevant to the goings on that night.
I’m just going to lead with this: he’s an idiot, and in an ideal world he would have not been in Kenosha that night at all.
That said, if you followed the trial and the evidence presented, it very obviously fit the definition of self defense.
I wish them the best in their civil trial, but unless they’re relying very hard on civil trials having a lower standard of evidence, are getting criminal trial evidence excluded, or are including new evidence not part of the criminal trial that makes a massive difference they probably won’t win.
Shooting Rosenbaum will likely have the easiest time if they can pay an ME to give contradictory expert testimony to what came from the criminal trial. Because while it’s on camera, you can’t clearly see what went on with their hands and the gun in the video, and have to rely on the ME and testimony to fill in the gaps.
Getting wrongful death civil damages for someone shooting someone who knocked them to the ground and was coming at them with a blunt object will be harder, but not as hard as for Grosskreutz, unless he can bar his criminal trial testimony from the civil case or come up with an excuse why his answers don’t mean what they appear to.