Teen arrested after 2 killed amid protests over police shooting
KENOSHA, Wis. — Two people were killed and one was injured amid gunfire overnight in Kenosha, Wis., as angry protests continued in this small Midwestern city over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.
Blake, who was apparently shot from behind as his children watched, is now paralyzed.
Police on Wednesday arrested a juvenile in the slayings of two people during the protests. Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was charged in Antioch, Ill., with first-degree intentional homicide. The city is 21 miles from Kenosha, across the state line.
The shootings took place just before midnight Tuesday by a gas station near Kenosha’s uptown district, close to where hundreds have demonstrated each night in defiance of city curfews and clashed with police outside the county courthouse. City officials and activists are bracing for crowds to throng the streets again for a fourth night Wednesday.
The wounded victim is in the hospital and is expected to survive, Kenosha Police Lt. Joseph Nosalik said.
Two Kenosha County supervisors wrote Wednesday to Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, demanding that he send in 1,250 National Guard members to the city to reinforce the 250 already on patrol in the aftermath of the police shooting Sunday of Blake. Bystanders’ videos of at least seven shots being fired by officers at the 29-year-old prompted protesters to converge on a lakeside business district. Demonstrators are demanding officer resignations and police reform.
Several buildings, including a Mexican restaurant, a furniture store, an auto dealer and a parole office, were set on fire this week.
“Our county is under attack,” Monica Yuhas, vice chairwoman of the county board, wrote in the letter to Evers.
The fatal shootings Tuesday night took place after police drove away crowds that had gathered by the county courthouse. Videos showed shots being fired near a gas station that had been patrolled by an armed militia group.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth described the armed gunmen as being “like a vigilante group” but said it was unclear if they were behind the shootings.
Beth said one person who died was shot in the head and another in the chest.
A cell phone video of two of those shootings was posted online. It shows a white male with a semiautomatic rifle running as he’s trailed by a crowd and officers. A voice says the male has shot someone. The video then shows the pursued male falling to the ground and firing his gun, hitting two people.
Clashes have continued nightly in Kenosha, a city of 100,000 on Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago, since police shot Blake over the weekend as he tried to enter his gray SUV. Police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets as demonstrators chant, “No justice, no peace,” in front of the courthouse. Protesters have hurled bottles and fireworks at police, and set garbage trucks on fire. Ashes blew over a church that was partially burned after a lot was set ablaze next door.
“We’ve long had problems with police in this area, and I’ve protested regularly since George Floyd died, but this is the most tense it’s been in a long time,” said Kejuan Goldsmith, a 19-year-old college student who regularly visits his sister in Kenosha.
“I’ve been out every night, and gotten teargassed twice even though I’ve been peaceful. In the short term, we want this officer fired; in the long term, we need broad change in our country over policing,” said Goldsmith, who is Black.
Protests have grown in the U.S., with police facing off against residents as near as the Wisconsin state capital, Madison and as far as Seattle; New York; Richmond, Va.; Washington, D.C.; and Portland, Ore.
Police have arrested at least six people in Madison on charges of vandalism of the state Capitol and property destruction, and at least 11 in Minneapolis, where groups broke windows at the county jail.
Meanwhile, Blake, who family members say has several bullet wounds, is in a Milwaukee hospital, alive but paralyzed from the waist down, his lawyer said.
