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.
Let’s be honest. Many, if not most, of us talked big when we were that age. The texts are just that. This is a kid with an inferiority complex trying to be seen as a tough guy. His actions that night were more like the coward he is inside. Which is not meant as an insult really. But he ran away. And to me he really did fire in the legal definition of self defense. The crime here is that he was there and armed at all. And further that society failed to help this kid find productive ways to prove his worth to himself. Kids aren’t born like this.
He did exactly what he said he was gonna do. He is a coward both ways.
Sure, to a point. But not about murdering people. And we didn’t then go and do just that. It shows some forethought. There have been other shooters who made posts before hand more or less admitting to wanting to provoke people, then claim self defense. They did not get to claim self defense.
And then we all grabbed a gun and actually killed people.
Oh wait.
And no. There is no self defense claim when you instigated it.
Doubt. I never threatened to kill people when I was that age. I never wanted a gun.
Maybe I’m special.
Another of the special folk chiming in here. I have never threatened to kill anyone in my life (except maybe as a very obvious joke) and I’ve never so much as fired a gun.