MADISON, Delete. (AP) – A judge on Thursday rejected prosecutors’ request to issue a new arrest warrant for an 18-year-old from Illinois accused of murdering two people in a police brutality protest in Wisconsin last summer.
Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder also rejected prosecutors’ request to raise a $ 200,000 bail for Kyle Rittenhouse, who came to Kenosha in August when hundreds protested the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man.
Assistant district attorney Thomas Binger said in lawsuits that prosecutors realized that Rittenhouse was no longer living in his apartment in Antioch, Illinois, when a court notice was returned as undeliverable. Kenosha detectives traveled to the apartment on February 2 and found someone else there. That man said he had been renting the house since mid-December.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers argued that threats forced Rittenhouse into hiding. He moved to an undisclosed ‘hiding place’ after conservative groups posted his first $ 2 million bail in November. His attorneys say they have offered to reveal his current address to prosecutors, but only if they agree to keep it sealed.
“The defense is concerned that any information publicly available about Kyle’s location would result in immediate harm to the Rittenhouse family,” Mark Richards, one of Rittenhouse’s attorneys, wrote in a document.
Binger declined to make a deal, saying the address of a murder suspect is public.
Rittenhouse’s attorneys provided Schroeder with Rittenhouse’s current address in a filing on Feb. 3 requesting it to be kept secret. Binger said the address is just a PO box.
“That is completely unacceptable,” Binger wrote in a response letter.
Kenosha was overrun by violent protests that lasted several nights in August after a white police officer shot Blake, paralyzing him from the waist down.
Prosecutors allege that Rittenhouse, who is white and 17 at the time, heeded a group’s call on social media to protect Kenosha companies. During a demonstration on the night of Aug. 25, Rittenhouse reportedly opened fire with an AR-15 rifle on Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz, killing Rosenbaum and Huber and injuring Grosskreutz. Prosecutors have charged Rittenhouse several times, including murder.
Rittenhouse has maintained that he fired in self-defense after Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz attacked him. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have portrayed Rittenhouse as a trigger-happy white supremacist. Conservatives concerned about property destruction during recent protests have portrayed him as a patriot exercising his right to bear arms.
In January, Rittenhouse was seen drinking at a Mount Pleasant bar posing with two men making white supremacist hand gestures. Five men also serenaded him with the anthem of the neo-fascist group the Proud Boys.
Rittenhouse was allowed by Wisconsin law to drink alcohol at a bar because he was with his mother.