


Some position themselves close to businesses that had been damaged on earlier nights. And my rights don’t end where somebody else’s feelings begin.” Throughout the day and early into the evening, more openly armed men arrive near the protests. There are no more masks being worn.” “Are there some truly peaceful protesters that may have been a little intimidated about seeing an armed person with a gun? Probably. “You get to see the people now that you have been living around forever. So I honestly feel that they came to incite more racial problems.” Porche Bennett, who’s a local activist, has been protesting for the last two days. It’s not exclusive to white people.” “Out of everyone that I saw with the militia, they were all white males. “The Second Amendment is meant for everybody. The presence of openly armed white men inflames the situation. They’re demanding an end to police violence against Black people. I wanted people to come to protect themselves.” Reporter: “But did any business owners ask you for help for protection?” “I was not asked directly by a business to defend anybody.” “Say his name.” Crowd: “Jacob Blake.” At this point, demonstrators are marching peacefully in downtown Kenosha. Hours after his post, thousands have seen it, and Mathewson arrives at Civic Center Park, the epicenter of the recent protests. “So my post just basically said, are there any patriots among us willing to take up arms and defend our lives, our families, our neighborhoods and our businesses?” The author of the post is Kevin Mathewson, a controversial former city councilman, who’s now been subpoenaed in the Rittenhouse trial. It’s Tuesday morning, 13 hours before the Rittenhouse shooting, when on a Facebook page called the Kenosha Guard, a post publishes. And soon, a Facebook post will incite more of them to come. Eventually, a new group inserts themselves into the already chaotic scene - dozens of men, mostly white, equipped with military-style weapons and gear. And at night, local businesses are looted and set on fire. And from there, it just started going crazy.” For the next 48 hours, the protests intensified.

And their presence kind of aggravated the crowd. In the air you could kind of feel the tension.” “At a certain point, more sheriffs arrived on the scene. “I mean, there was tons of people already starting to gather there. But to watch it, I guess it got to the point where, how many more?” Koerri Washington, who’s a local live streamer and now subpoenaed in the Rittenhouse trial, arrives to document the situation. Video of the shooting quickly spreads online. Blake’s lawyer later said that Blake didn’t pose a threat. As Blake moves away from them and leans into his car, he’s holding a knife.

On the Sunday before the Rittenhouse shooting, Kenosha police officers respond to a domestic complaint and try to arrest Jacob Blake. What we found was a complex set of motivations on the streets that night that reflected the growing polarization in the country and helped set the scene … … for violence. “Black lives matter!” While protests against systemic racism were what first drew out crowds in Kenosha, Rittenhouse, his victims, and many of those closest to the shootings, were white. It felt like a war zone.” “We’re not like, bad people or like, people just going out to like, up.” “I feel like had we not been there and not reacted the way that we did to the situation, I think we could have been looking at an even worse scenario.” We also spoke with the sheriff who led law enforcement’s response that night, which has become the subject of lawsuits. We analyzed hours of footage from that day and traveled to Kenosha just weeks after the events to hear from witnesses, several of whom have now been subpoenaed in the Rittenhouse trial. But our investigation of these events reveals that the story is about much more than a single person. The case will likely focus on the few crucial minutes around the fatal shootings on Aug.
#Rittenhouse shooting drone video trial
“Oh, my God!” Now that shooter, 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, is standing trial on charges of murder. “Black lives matter!” Crowd: “Black lives matter!” Crowd: “Black lives matter!” Two days later, in the midst of protests and unrest, a teenager carrying an assault rifle kills two people and wounds a third. Transcript Reconstructing the Rittenhouse Shootings: How Kenosha Echoed America’s Polarization In the months leading up to Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial for killing two people, we analyzed hours of footage and interviewed key witnesses from that fatal night in Kenosha, Wis., to understand how the country’s polarization set the scene for violence.Ī police officer in Kenosha, Wis., shoots a Black man named Jacob Blake seven times from behind, leaving him partially paralyzed.
