KENOSHA, Wis. — Police arrested an Illinois teenager Wednesday after two people were shot to death during another night of Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
A law enforcement official identified the suspect as 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch.
Commander Norman Johnson of the Antioch Police Department said the suspect was arrested on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide.
Antioch is about 15 miles from Kenosha, which has seen three straight nights of unrest since the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.
In an attack caught on cellphone video, two people were killed Tuesday night when the shooter opened fire in the middle of the street with a semi-automatic rifle.
“I just killed somebody,” a person in a the video could be heard saying at one point during the shooting rampage that erupted just before midnight.
In the wake of the killings, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers authorized 500 members of the National Guard to support local law enforcement around Kenosha, doubling the number of troops sent in. The governor’s office said he working with other states to bring in additional National Guard troops and law officers.
One victim was shot in the head and the other in the chest, authorities said Wednesday afternoon at a news conference in Kenosha.
Both men who were killed were from Wisconsin. One was a 26-year-old Silver Lake resident, the other was a 36-year-old man from Kenosha.
A 26-year-old man from West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, also suffered a gunshot wound but is expected to survive.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said Wednesday it’s possible the shooter was part of a group that wanted him to deputize armed citizens to help maintain order in Kenosha.
“Yesterday I had a person call me and say, ‘Why don’t you deputize citizens who have guns to come out and patrol the city of Kenosha?’ And I’m like ‘Oh, hell no. And what happened last night was probably the perfect reason why I wouldn’t,” Beth said.
“I don’t know this for sure, but the incident that happened last night where two people lost their lives, I think they were part of this group that wanted me to deputize them,” he said.
However, Beth said he wasn’t sure if the shooter was part of a vigilante group or militia or if he’d been acting on his own.
Cellphone video of at least two of the shootings that was posted online shows a young person with a rifle jogging down the middle of a street as a crowd and some police officers follow him. Someone in the crowd can be heard asking, “What did he do?” and another person responds that the man had shot someone.
The male with the gun stumbles and falls, and as he is approached by people in the crowd, he fires three or four shots from a seated position, hitting at least two people, including one who falls over and another who stumbles away to cries of “Medic! Medic!”
A witness, Julio Rosas, 24, said when the gunman stumbled and fell, “two people jumped onto him, and there was a struggle for control of his rifle. At that point during the struggle, he just began to fire multiple rounds, and that dispersed people near him.”
“The rifle was being jerked around in all directions while it was being fired,” Rosas said.
In the cellphone footage, as the crowd scatters, the gunman stands up and continues walking down the street as police cars arrive. The man puts up his hands and walks toward the squad cars, with someone in the crowd yelling at police the man had just shot someone, but several of the cars drive past him toward the people who had been shot.
Asked why officers didn’t take the shooter into custody as he walked toward police with his arms raised, Beth said he wasn’t sure but suspected the chaotic scene that included people running and screaming might have given the officers “tunnel vision.”
While it was unclear what prompted Rittinhouse to go to Kenosha, an event Tuesday night promoted by a group called the Kenosha Guard laid out plans to meet at Civic Center Park and called for “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property.” Kevin Matthewson, a former Kenosha alderman, helped organize the event.
In the park Tuesday night, Matthewson told the Sun-Times that he and his allies were arming themselves because police were “outnumbered” a night earlier by individuals who aimed to “destroy property and harm other people.”
“As long as good citizens arm themselves, we’ll never be outnumbered by the criminals,” said Matthewson, adding that he doesn’t believe “carrying a gun is any type of vigilantism.”
“I’m not out here to enforce the law,” he added. “I’m not out here to tell people what to do. I’m out here to make sure my brothers, my sisters, my countrymen are not getting shot, [having Molotov] cocktails thrown at them, being smashed over the head with bricks.”
He didn’t respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The Kenosha Guard page was ultimately taken offline, along with the event. But not before the meet-up garnered thousands of responses and was promoted on the far-right website Infowars and the fringe message board 4Chan.
Before the shootings, Rittenhouse told a reporter with the right wing outlet The Blaze that he and the other vigilantes were in Kenosha “protecting from the citizens” and claimed he had been “pepper-sprayed.” Rittenhouse then said the armed group wasn’t using “non-lethal” ammunition to guard the area.
CONTEXT: I spoke with the alleged shooter earlier in the night who stated he was there to protect property
— ELIJAH RIOT (@ElijahSchaffer) August 26, 2020
He did not make racist comments, condemn #BLM, or mention political motivations for his actions
He said that he was there to protect property & was carrying a firearm pic.twitter.com/ViYUB65tiy
In another interview, Rittenhouse further tried to explain what he was doing in Kenosha.
“People are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business. And part of my job is to also help people,” he said. “If there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle because I need to protect myself, obviously.”
CONTEXT: additional interview of the #KenoshaRiot shooter by reporter @RichieMcGinniss
— ELIJAH RIOT (@ElijahSchaffer) August 26, 2020
Still no signs of malicious intentions, racist motivations, though he did understand the potential threat of being at this event, hence the firearm
pic.twitter.com/i9cCZ1gtrC
Another video circulating on social media appears to show Rittenhouse interacting with law enforcement officials in militarized police vehicles. At one point, an officer appears to offer up bottles of water before others in the area are warned they’re trespassing. As Rittenhouse goes to retrieve water, an officer thanks the group he’s with.
“We appreciate you guys,” a voice says over a megaphone. “We really do.”
Here is your shooter being offered and tossed a bottled water out of a LEO vehicle. “We appreciate you guys being out here.” pic.twitter.com/63NtIOcdK2
— Nap Lajoie (@randomanne) August 26, 2020
Asked why police would would have shared water and seemingly encourage the presence of armed vigilantes, Beth said: “Our deputies would toss a water to anyone.“
Kenosha Police Chief Dan Miskinis said he wasn’t aware of any video showing officers thanking armed individuals for their presence.
“Across this nation there have been armed civilians who have come out to exercise their constitutional right and to potentially protect property. So, am I aware the groups exist? Yes. But They weren’t invited to come,“ he said.
A Facebook page that appears to belong to Rittenhouse has since been taken down, though archived posts show him posing with a long gun and endorsing the pro-police Blue Lives Matter movement. Another post to a page that appears to belong to his mother shows him wearing a police uniform with the caption “WE BACK THE BLUE.”
Rittenhouse’s mother didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said Wednesday he didn’t want the presence of militia members.
“I don’t need more guns on the street in the community when we are trying to make sure we keep people safe. Law enforcement is trained. They are the ones who are responsible. They are the ones we have faith in to do their jobs and make sure it gets done.”
Antaramian said he wasn’t sure how much extra help to ask for to maintain law and order.
“How many people do you ask for in a situation like this? No one knows. This is definitely new to us also,” he said.
“I’m not good at this,” he said, explaining a lack of information released to the public this week from his office. “And I have been mayor for a long long time, but this isn’t what I’m used to.”
Sheriff Beth said curfew in Kenosha was being moved up from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m. and police, which had largely not enforced curfew in previous days, were going to begin making arrests Wednesday if people flaunted the law.
“We are not going to put up with what we saw Monday night,” Beth said, referring to widespread looting and fires set by rioters.
“Every day we get better. In Kenosha we are not accustomed to riots. We’re not accustomed to it,” Beth said, noting that additional police from neighboring communities and other parts of the state would be on hand to help maintain peace Wednesday night.
Contributing: Associated Press
