Tensions are rising outside the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin where jurors are deliberating the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old facing intentional homicide charges for shooting three people and killing two during a protest in August 2020.
Gaggles of his right-wing supporters, including at least one waving a giant “Let’s Go Brandon” flag, which is a conservative meme making fun of President Joe Biden, were already congregating outside the courthouse Tuesday, the first day of deliberations. Several burly men, including one with a hat saying “Shoot Your Local Pedophile,” lined up on the steps.
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Meanwhile, activists, including some who were wearing T-shirts saying “Fuck Kyle,” called for Rittenhouse’s conviction. Both groups came with megaphones and got into shouting matches.
Earlier in the day, photographer Alex Kent captured a man in a pickup truck doing a Nazi salute in the direction of Black Lives Matter protesters outside the courthouse.
“Move your Black ass back,” one white Rittenhouse supporter yelled at a racial justice activist during a particularly heated confrontation.
The jury began deliberations on Tuesday, after a highly unusual incident where Rittenhouse was invited to pull the numbers from a raffle drum to determine which 12 of the 18 jurors would decide the verdict.
To his supporters, Rittenhouse is a conservative folk hero, an antithesis to left-wing lawlessness, and a poster boy for the Second Amendment. GOP lawmakers and far-right extremists alike have rallied around his cause, pouring millions of dollars into his legal fund, and even honoring him through T-shirts and flags.
But to his opponents, Rittenhouse is a teenage vigilante who came to Kenosha, where protests against police brutality and racial injustice were underway, armed with an AR-style rifle and in search of conflict.
Authorities view the Rittenhouse case as a potential lightning rod for political violence. Kenosha is bracing for possible unrest regardless of how the jury votes, and 500 members of the National Guard have been placed on standby.
The tense political narratives surrounding Rittenhouse’s case have played out during the often contentious two-week trial, where Rittenhouse is facing a range of charges, including two first-degree counts of intentional homicide—each count for the two men he killed on the night of Aug. 25, 2020.
Among his supporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday were Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who themselves became conservative darlings in the summer of 2020 after they were photographed pointing guns at unarmed protesters from the lawn of their St. Louis mansion.
They were there, Mark McCloskey told reporters, “to support people’s right to defend themselves.”
“If you defund the police, and the government is not there to protect the citizens, citizens have to protect themselves,” said Mark, adding that he hoped Rittenhouse would be acquitted on all counts.
Meanwhile, members of the Black community in Kenosha held a press conference of their own, urging people not to travel to the city to riot in response to the verdict.
“We as Kenosha activists call for peace, as we always have,” a woman said in a video taken by freelance reporter Sergio Olmos. “Anyone threatening to come to our city to kill, threaten, or do damage is absolutely not welcome. Our legal system will never do true justice regardless of the outcome. Our community deserves healing, care, reform and anti-racist justice.”
