A former spokesperson for Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse has accused him of hiding his true intentions in a new documentary examining his failed criminal prosecution.
In August 2020, Rittenhouse claimed that he drove 20 miles from his native Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to help police restore order during the civil unrest that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake. However, Rittenhouse’s texts revealed more sinister intentions, and that reportedly blindsided spokesperson Dave Hancock.
“I believed things he told me that I now understand to be… lies,” Hancock said in the 90-minute Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse documentary, reported The Guardian.
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Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and was charged with homicide for their deaths. At trial, Rittenhouse claimed self-defense, and was acquitted in November 2021.
According to Hancock, Rittenhouse had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight.”
Texts from Rittenhouse’s phone reveal that he had an angry reaction to seeing shoplifters at a CVS pharmacy on Aug. 10, a full two weeks before he traveled to Kenosha.
“The world is disgusting,” texted Rittenhouse. He added, “It makes me [f---ing] sick.”
Hancock commented, “This is where his head’s at—you know what I mean?”
In another text, Rittenhouse sent: “I wish they would come into my house,” adding, “I will f---ing murder them.”
Hancock said his first impression of Rittenhouse was of a “scared kid, arrogant, oblivious to the world around him.”
“When he was telling me about the story, I believed he was being sincere,” he said. “I believed things he told me that I now understand to be one of his many lies. And that hurts. That sucks.”
The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse is an original documentary airing on the true crime network Law&Crime.
