Kyle Rittenhouse cried during his testimony on Day 7 in a trial where a jury will decide whether the 18-year-old’s shooting of three men, killing two of them, could be considered self-defense.
As Rittenhouse began to recount the moments leading to his shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man killed by Rittenhouse that night, he began to lose composure. At one point, Rittenhouse couldn’t continue his testimony while sobbing, and Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder called for a break..
On Aug. 25, 2020, Rittenhouse, then 17, went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, armed with an AR-style semi-automatic weapon. Rittenhouse, who lived in nearby Antioch, Illinois, and his lawyers have argued that he was at the demonstrations against racial injustice in the city to protect property from protesters. There had been days of unrest in Kenosha after a white officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was paralyzed after the shooting.
Rittenhouse faces five felony charges. If convicted of the most serious charge — first-degree intentional homicide — he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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