MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) – A judge on Thursday denied prosecutors’ request for a new arrest warrant for an 18-year-old Illinois man accused of killing two people during a police brutality protest in Wisconsin on last summer.
Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder also rejected prosecutors’ request to increase the $ 200,000 bail for Kyle Rittenhouse, who arrived in Kenosha in August as hundreds protested the police shooting. Jacob Blake, a black man.
District Assistant Attorney Thomas Binger said in court records that prosecutors realized Rittenhouse was no longer living in his apartment in Antioch, Illinois, when a court notice for non-delivery was returned. Kenosha detectives traveled to the apartment on February 2 and found someone living there. That man said he had rented the place since mid-December.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers argued that the threats have forced Rittenhouse to hide. He moved into an undisclosed “safe house” after conservative groups declared his initial $ 2 million bail in November. His lawyers say they have offered to reveal his current speech to prosecutors, but only if they would agree to keep it sealed.
“It is worrying to the defense that any information about Kyle’s location being publicly available would cause immediate harm to the Rittenhouse family,” wrote Mark Richards, one of Rittenhouse’s attorneys.
Binger refused to make a deal, saying the address of a murder defendant is public.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers provided Schroeder with Rittenhouse’s current address in a Feb. 3 filing with a request to keep it a secret. Binger said the address is just a mailbox.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Binger wrote in a written response.
Kenosha was surrounded by violent protests that lasted several nights in August after a white police officer shot Blake, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors allege that Rittenhouse, who was white and 17 at the time, responded to a group’s call on social media to protect Kenosha’s businesses. During a demonstration on the night of August 25, Rittenhouse allegedly opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle against Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz, killing Rosenbaum and Huber and wounding Grosskreutz. Prosecutors have charged Rittenhouse with several offenses, including homicide.
Rittenhouse has maintained that he fired in self-defense after Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz attacked him. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have painted Rittenhouse as a happy white supremacist. Conservatives annoyed by 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 Mount Pleasant bar and posing with two men while gesturing at the hands of the white supremacist. Five men also serenaded him with the anthem of the neo-fascist group Proud Boys.
Rittenhouse could consume alcohol in a bar under Wisconsin law because he was with his mother.