(Posted to FB by John Beadle.)
Jeremiah just wanted to find his car and go home, but he was trapped. A
massive line of police in riot gear had just forced him and hundreds of
other protesters out of Kenosha's Civic Center Park and into the street.
After that, there was nowhere to go. Soldiers and cops blocked one end
of the road. White guys with big guns blocked the other.
As he made his way toward it, Jeremiah saw more armed white men. Two
crouched on the roof of a building, sniper style. Two or three others
stood guard over the lot. One of them, a babyface with a backward ball
cap, raised an assault rifle and pointed it at him.
Jeremiah, 24 and Black, was more annoyed than afraid. He'd been out
protesting all summer, more than 90 days so far. He knew about these
guys and their scare tactics, and he refused to be intimidated.
When the kid started yelling, Jeremiah shouted back: "I'm trying to get
out of here. If you're gonna shoot me, just shoot!"
A few minutes later, Jeremiah saw the same guy pointing his weapon at
someone else.
This time, Kyle Rittenhouse fired.
Rittenhouse, 17, has been charged with five felonies and a misdemeanor
after shooting three people Tuesday night, two of them fatally. His lead
attorney, John M. Pierce of the law firm Pierce Bainbridge, has said he
plans to argue self-defense.
***
How we reported this story
Information contained in this story comes from interviews with eight
protesters who attended demonstrations in Kenosha. It also comes from
firsthand observations of reporters who covered the protests and news
conferences regarding the shooting of Jacob Blake by police and the
shootings of three men on Tuesday night. Reporters also reviewed videos,
websites, social media accounts, news releases, court records and
numerous media reports.
The witnesses quoted in this story were willing to have their full names
published, but the Journal Sentinel is using only their first names
because of the serious nature of numerous threats and harassment
directed at people involved in this case.
***
That night had felt different from the start.
Among protesters, the rumor spread: Hundreds of white men with guns had
answered an online call from a self-described militia group known as the
Kenosha Guard and would be waiting in the park to shoot them.
Not nearly that many armed men showed up, but they were impossible to
avoid. Some joined the marchers and pledged to protect them. Many
protesters still felt more afraid than secure.
Early in the evening, before he became stranded in the search for his
car, Jeremiah got into an argument with one of them.
Jeremiah was talking to a reporter when an angry woman interrupted,
telling him she was tired of people like him burning things down. As he
argued he'd done no such thing, an armed man came up and shoved him.
"Be ready," Jeremiah recalls the man saying. "If you come toward us,
we're gonna open fire."
The attitude of law enforcement was different that night, too, several
people who have attended numerous protests told the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel. On Sunday and Monday, police had allowed demonstrators to
linger in the park. But on Tuesday, what seemed like hundreds more cops
than before stood shoulder to shoulder and forced them out. Several
armored vehicles rolled through the grass.
Jeremiah later watched a video shot late Tuesday night that shows a law
enforcement officer in an armored vehicle giving bottles of water to a
group of armed men that included Rittenhouse. The officer thanks the men
for their help, though they are clearly civilians in violation of the
city's 8 p.m. curfew.
“We appreciate you guys,” the officer on the video says. “We really do.”
In another clip, an unidentified armed white man in a baseball cap and a
ballistic vest — an unofficial uniform of the self-styled militias —
says this: "You know what the cops told us today? They were like, 'We’re
gonna push ‘em down by you, 'cause you can deal with them and then we’re
gonna leave.'"
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth has said he did not deputize citizens
and would never do so. Police Chief Daniel Miskinis didn't respond to
the Journal Sentinel's question about whether he was cooperating with
the Kenosha Guard.
Whether the statement on the video was true or not, Jeremiah believes
that was the plan.
"They were pushing us to the area where the alt-right group was at," he
said of law enforcement. "We were cornered."
Marimackenzie was serving as a volunteer street medic that night,
providing first aid to injured protesters. Of Native American and
Japanese descent, she'd decided to take on the role because she hated
the thought of people being hurt while they were protesting violence.
Earlier in the evening, she'd treated a woman hit in the eye with a
ricocheted rubber bullet and helped others wash away the tear gas that
blurred their vision.
Fellow street medic Gaige Grosskreutz was helping people deal with tear
gas, too. Marimackenzie, who had spent several evenings working with him
throughout the summer of protests in Milwaukee, stopped to say hello. A
22-year-old with only 20 hours of street medic training to go with her
CPR certification, she looked up to Grosskreutz, a licensed paramedic.
Another guy in the vicinity, one Marimackenzie didn't recognize, was
telling people he was a medic, too. But he made her uneasy. He had an
AR-15 slung across his chest; no medic she'd ever worked with carried a
weapon like that.
Some medics arm themselves with handguns as a last resort for
protection, but their priority was helping people. Usually, they were
paired with security teams.
Marimackenzie's medic partner gestured to the young man.
"Avoid that guy. He looks like bad news."
She would later learn the man who'd drawn her partner's warning was
Rittenhouse.
The two walked on. About 10 minutes later, Marimackenzie heard two men
yelling at each other. She couldn't tell what they were saying. Shots
rang out. A man fell to the ground 50 yards from her.
Before she could reach the man, later identified as Joseph Rosenbaum,
36, a group of bystanders had picked him up and loaded him into a
hospital SUV standing by for injured people at the edge of the Froedtert
South medical center's parking lot.
"Back up!" Marimackenzie yelled at the crowds trying to livestream the
scene. "Give the patient his privacy!"
She looked into the man's eyes. They were open and motionless.
As the SUV carrying Rosenbaum sped across the parking lot to the
hospital's back door, Marimackenzie's medic partner told her the shooter
was still in the area. The two medics crouched behind a brick hospital
sign, hoping it would be enough to protect them if he opened fire again.
Her fellow medic didn't tell her until later that he'd seen the gunman
run past them, fewer than 10 yards away.
Jeremiah saw the shooter flee, too, and he could tell the teen was scared.
"He knew he messed up," Jeremiah said. "He panicked. Even his people
knew what he did was wrong. They were all shouting at him, 'What are you
doing? What are you doing?' I saw it in their faces. I saw it in their
body language."
Rittenhouse lives in Antioch, Illinois, about 20 miles from Kenosha.
Although it’s still not clear how he got to the scene of Tuesday night's
protest, it’s not surprising that he decided to go.
Rittenhouse considered himself a member of some sort of militia, trying
to protect life and property, according to his social media posts and
video interviews. Hours before the shootings, he stood in front of a
boarded up building for an interview with the Daily Caller.
"People are getting injured and our job is to protect this business,"
Rittenhouse said on a video of the interview. "And my job also is to
protect people. If someone is hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s
why I have my rifle; I’ve gotta protect myself, obviously. But I also
have my med kit."
Rittenhouse idolizes the police. His social media accounts, before they
were taken down Wednesday, were full of logos and memes supporting law
enforcement and showing off his uniform as a member of the
Illinois-based Grayslake and Lindenhurst Law Enforcement Explorer
Program, which offers youths an inside look at policing.
Rittenhouse, the middle of three children, lived in Grayslake for four
or five years, according to a former neighbor who declined to give her
name. The children appeared to have a difficult home life growing up.
“Those kids didn't have a chance," she said.
Rittenhouse’s parents are divorced, court records show.
In January 2017, his mother filed for a restraining order against two
boys at her son’s middle school. They had called him “dumb and stupid”
and threatened to “kick his butt,” court records say.
They also had followed him and taken photos of him to post on social
media. A month earlier, they had called the family’s apartment and told
Rittenhouse's mom she needed to watch her son or he would get hurt, she
wrote in the court filing.
Rittenhouse's mother never got the restraining order. She didn't show up
for a court hearing and the matter was dropped.
Several former classmates at Lakes Community High School in Antioch told
VICE News they remembered Rittenhouse as short-tempered and easily
offended. He was known for his love of the police, guns and President
Donald Trump, they said.
Jeremiah was near the back of the pack chasing Rittenhouse as he fled
the parking lot where Rosenbaum died. Jeremiah was more concerned about
getting to his car than he was about trying to catch the gunman.
Anthony Huber was near the front of the group. Jeremiah didn't know
Huber well, but had seen him around. A white ally, Huber had
participated in June's Black is Beautiful Ride, a 16-mile trek to raise
money for Milwaukee community groups.
At marches throughout the summer, Huber and his skateboard were a
near-constant presence. He sometimes served as a scout, rolling ahead of
marchers and radioing back about police or hazards along the route.
The last time Jeremiah saw him, Huber was confronting Rittenhouse, who
had fallen as he ran.
"Those brave souls were the ones who ran toward him to try to grab his
gun," Jeremiah said. "They were heroes. They were trying to save our lives."
Huber — armed only with his skateboard — rushed at Rittenhouse and hit
him with it before being shot in the chest, stumbling a few paces and
falling to the ground.
Another man stopped a couple feet away, a handgun and a cellphone in his
raised hands. A moment later, he moved toward the gunman again, without
raising the gun. He was shot in the arm.
On a video, the wounded man can be heard shouting for a medic.
Rittenhouse stands and walks backward for a few paces, confirming he
isn't being followed, the video shows. Then he turns and walks away.
"Everyone was yelling, 'That's the shooter!'" Jeremiah said. "And the
police just let him pass."
Beth, the sheriff, has said the officers in the squad cars and armored
vehicles Rittenhouse approached with his hands up likely didn't
understand the shouts of the crowd due to the noise and chaos. According
to his attorney, Rittenhouse went back to Antioch and turned himself in.
***
Response from Kyle Rittenhouse's attorney
In a statement released late Friday, Rittenhouse's lead attorney, John
M. Pierce of the law firm Pierce Bainbridge, characterized the shootings
as self-defense.
Among other things, Pierce contended:
• Rittenhouse was "accosted," "verbally threatened and taunted" by
"rioters" Tuesday night while guarding a mechanic’s shop along Sheridan
Road with a group of armed men.
• Rittenhouse was being chased by "rioters" when he heard a gunshot
behind him. He turned and was faced with "an attacker lunging towards
him and reaching for his rifle."
• "A growing mob" chased Rittenhouse down the street until he fell. The
people chasing him "kicked" him and "bashed him over the head with a
skateboard."
• "In fear for his life and concerned the crowd would either continue to
shoot at him or even use his own weapon against him, Kyle had no choice
but to fire multiple rounds towards his immediate attackers," the
release says.
***
As Marimackenzie, the street medic, left her hiding place near the
hospital, she came across a young woman in distress.
"Are you OK, ma'am?" Marimackenzie asked. "Do you need anything?"
"No, I'm not OK!" Huber's girlfriend, Hannah, screamed through tears.
"My boyfriend just got shot!"
The woman was traumatized, but not injured. There was nothing
Marimackenzie could do.
Once Marimackenzie reached her car, she got a text: "Has anyone heard
from Gaige?"
She texted back, not worried about the paramedic she respected so much:
"I just saw him 15 minutes ago. I'm sure he's fine."
He wasn't.
Grosskreutz was the man shot in the arm. With no medics available to
respond to his shouts for help, Grosskreutz supervised his own first
aid, instructing a man who'd been livestreaming the shooting on how to
apply a tourniquet.
Grosskreutz was wearing a hat and backpack that identified him as a
medic when he rushed toward Huber, according to a close friend who
didn't want her name used. "And yes, he had a gun because we're allowed
to protect ourselves, but the gun was down, not pointed," she said.
His partner medic that night, who had first tried to help Huber, took
Grosskreutz to two different hospitals, the friend said. At the first,
they were asked to clear the waiting room because an injured officer was
coming in. From the second, he was airlifted to Froedtert in Milwaukee
for surgery.
Jeremiah also considers Grosskreutz a friend.
"He's a super-cool, laid-back guy," Jeremiah said of Grosskreutz, who is
white. "He's a great advocate, a great ally, always speaking up for
minority groups. He's just that person everybody loves talking to and he
gives great advice."
Marimackenzie has turned to Grosskreutz for advice, too. She once called
him from a Milwaukee protest when she encountered a woman with an open
wound and didn't know what to do.
Marimackenzie said she's never seen him draw his weapon, not even when
he was hit by a car driving through the crowd at another protest over
the summer.
"Gaige is a very kind and peaceful man and people who are trying to
argue that he's not are just wrong," she said. "He never would have
pulled that gun unless he thought his life was at risk."
Less than 24 hours later, the woman Marimackenzie saw outside the
hospital was back in Kenosha, speaking to fellow protesters near the
place where her boyfriend died.
“He had so much love in his heart for this city," Hannah said of Huber.
"He took down an armed gunman with nothing but his f---ing skateboard,
and he took that f---ing bullet.”
Still traumatized by the events of the night before, Jeremiah stood and
listened.
"I think we have to continue to fight," he said later. "We're trying to
stop a war, not start another one. We're fighting to end racism.
Fighting for a better future for our kids and our grandkids. I won't let
this stop me."
***
Ashley Luthern, Annysa Johnson, Jordyn Noenning, Ricardo Torres, Sarah
Volpenhein and Samantha Hendrickson of the Journal Sentinel staff
contributed to this report.
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