MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) – A judge on Thursday granted prosecutors’ request to issue a new arrest warrant for an 18-year-old Illinois man accused of killing two people during a police brutality in Wisconsin last summer, refused.
Kenosha County District Judge Bruce Schroeder also denied prosecutors’ request for a $ 200,000 bail increase of Kyle Rittenhouse, who came to Kenosha in August because hundreds of police shootings of Jacob Blake, a black man, argued.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said in court documents that prosecutors realized 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 that someone else was living there. The man said he has been renting the place since mid-December.
Rittenhouse’s attorneys argued that threats forced Rittenhouse to hide. He moved into an unknown ‘safe house’ after conservative groups posted his initial $ 2 million bail in November. His lawyers say they have offered to disclose his current address to prosecutors, but only if they would agree to keep it sealed.
“It is of concern to the defense that any information regarding Kyle’s location that is publicly available could immediately harm the Rittenhouse family,” Mark Richards, one of Rittenhouse’s attorneys, wrote in a document.
Binger refused to enter into an agreement, saying the address of a murder accused is a public record.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers provided Schroeder with the current address of Rittenhouse in a February 3 filing, requesting that it be kept secret. Binger said the address is only a mailbox.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Binger wrote in a response note.
Kenosha was engulfed in violent protests in August after a white police officer shot Blake and left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors allege Rittenhouse, who was white and then 17, answered a group’s call on social media to protect Kenosha businesses. During a demonstration on the night of August 25, Rittenhouse allegedly opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle on Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz, killing Rosenbaum and Huber and wounding Grosskreutz. Prosecutors have charged Rittenhouse with several charges, including murder.
Rittenhouse maintained he shot out of self-defense after Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz attacked him. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement portrayed Rittenhouse as a trigger-happy white supremaker. Conservatives upset over the destruction of property during recent protests have portrayed him as a patriot exercising his right to bear arms.
In January, Rittenhouse was seen drinking at a bar in Mount Pleasant and posing with two men while making white supremacist hand gestures. Five men also serenade him with the national anthem of the neo-fascist group the Proud Boys.
Rittenhouse could drink alcohol in a bar under Wisconsin law because he was with his mother.