A white, 17-year-old police admirer was arrested on Wednesday after two people were shot to death during a third straight night of protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the police shooting of African American Jacob Blake.
Kyle Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, about 25km from Kenosha, was taken into custody in Illinois on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide in the attack on Tuesday that was largely captured on cellphone video. The shooting left a third person wounded.
“I just killed somebody,” the gunman, carrying a semi-automatic rifle, could be heard saying at one point.
Photo: EPA-EFE
In the wake of the killings, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers authorized the deployment of 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha, doubling the number of troops in the city of 100,000.
Authorities announced a 7pm curfew, although protesters ignored it again on Wednesday.
As of early yesterday, the protests were mostly peaceful, in contrast with the violent clashes that marked earlier nights of protests.
The dead were identified only as a 26-year-old resident of Silver Lake, Wisconsin, and a 36-year-old from Kenosha.
The wounded person, a 36-year-old from West Allis, Wisconsin, was expected to survive, police said.
“We were all chanting ‘Black lives matter’ at the gas station and then we heard, boom, boom, and I told my friend: ‘That’s not fireworks,’” 19-year-old protester Devin Scott told the Chicago Tribune. “And then this guy with this huge gun runs by us in the middle of the street and people are yelling: ‘He shot someone. He shot someone.’”
According to witness accounts and video footage, police apparently let the gunman walk past them and leave the scene with a rifle over his shoulder, as members of the crowd were yelling for him to be arrested.
Sheriff David Beth described a chaotic, high-stress scene, with lots of radio traffic and people screaming, chanting and running, saying that such conditions that can cause “tunnel vision” among law officers.
Rittenhouse was assigned a public defender in Illinois for a hearing today on his transfer to Wisconsin.
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