stagpanther said:
Maybe, maybe not. It is known that KR has an affinity for militia groups with known white supremacy views--both before and after the Kenosha event.
This is not true. His picture was taken in a bar, legally drinking in the presence of his mother, after attending his arraignment, which happened to be a few days after his 18th birthday. The best reporting of what happened is a long article detailing Pierce's and Lin Wood's involvement and Kyle's security. Either one of the lawyers or the security people contacted local proud boys, which is why a few showed up. Kyle didn't go looking for those Proud Boys, it's doubtful he knew who they were or the extent of their ideology, and he ended up firing those two lawyers. Other than one other engineered setup where Pierce had Kyle fly somewhere (FL, I believe) to meet with people, and one person at a lunch happened to be a PB, Kyle's had no more notable contact with that group or any other group commonly considered to be problematic.
There is zero evidence he had any connection to the PB or any racist group or had even expressed racist sentiments prior to the shooting. The only "dirt" people have on him is that he supported Blue Lives Matter on social media. Which is enough to make him guilty in some people's eyes, because police are inherently evil and anyone who supports them must be evil and a murderous racist. I hope that's not your take.
Don't know if you saw the footage that was just introduced that was shot from a drone--it clearly shows KR wasting Rosenbaum while there was still feet of separation between them.
Not quite true. There's the small drone roughly above the intersection, and the FBI IR drone, but either way, Kyle's first shot looks like it took place when Rosenbaum was in arms reach of Kyle, or at least arm's reach of his gun. Kyle was backing up while firing. That's what created distance. Rosenbaum began falling/lunging (he was running forward and had his pelvis and thigh shot first), and the final two shots were a graze wound to the side of his head and a shot "to the back", which was probably a high angle shot behind the shoulder angled down his body as he was falling.
A shot "to the back" is simply the location of the entry wound, and says nothing about angle. Given that it's not contested that Rosenbaum was facing Kyle for the first two shots, and all four shots happened in 0.7 seconds, trying to besmirch Kyle for where the last shot ended up is absurd. Many police shootings have been far worse than that, with entire mag dumps, and they're generally considered legal as long as justification existed for the first shot, unless there's a clear pause and reassessment such that follow-up shots could have a different intent or there's obvious error in the reassessment—which is a very high bar because perception degrades due to adreline.
Should Kyle have stopped firing after 2 or 3 shots? I don't know how you can hold him to that kind of standard when his assailant was falling toward him. For all Kyle knew, the first two shots missed, and Rosenbaum was intentionally taking a dive to roll toward him and continue the attack from the ground. With the benefit of hindsight, we can all say distance was increasing and Rosenbaum's body language was probably more of an off-balance forward collapse than a roll, but we don't know. The prosecution can't prove how Rosenbaum moved as he fell beyond a reasonable doubt, which is legally required to convict based on the theory that Kyle's final shot(s) were objectively unreasonable.
stagpanther said:
That is a pretty bizarre moment, and seems to conflict with earlier testimony from other witnesses. When I see that picture of the moment when a large part of his arm is evaporating as he is getting shot by Rittenhouse--the picture looks to me like his Glock is pointed down--and Rittenhouse is at a nearly 90 degree angle to his arm and body. Of the three shootings, this one comes the closest to being justifiable IMO--but then again it's entirely possible that Grosscruetz felt he needed to "neutralize" someone who had already killed. Once again--deadly threat is in the eye of beholder.
The high quality still photo we've hopefully all seen was something like a second before he was shot. His hands are up and his Glock is pointed up. The bgonthescene video is momentarily obscured by a bystander, and when the view clears, Gaige has closed to within a few feet of Kyle, dropped his hands, his body is angled/bladed with his left hand in front and his right hand back, as if he'd just drawn from retention and his hand was coming up. There's no way the bore axis was 90° out of line with Kyle. Best I can estimate/guess is that it was maybe 30° off, which could be corrected very quickly. Kyle had no more time to see what Gaige was going to do. He had to shoot Gaige or allow Gaige to shoot him, if that's what Gaige was going to do. Gaige subsequently admitted to his friend that he wished he hadn't hesitated to "empty his mag" into Kyle. The fact that he said he hesitated, rather than deciding not to shoot, indicates he was in fact about to shoot Kyle, making Kyle's perception not just objectively reasonable but actually correct based on Gaige's own statement. Full quote from Jacob Marshall's social media:
Jacob Marshall said:
“I just talked to Gaige Grosskreutz toohis[sic] only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun before emptying the entire mag into him.”
(Jacob Marshall was also the passenger in Gaige's car when he got pulled over and arrested for DUI last fall.)
There's no plausible explanation for Gaige's movement over that 1 second other than he was going to shoot Kyle or attempt to get inside the arc of his rifle and order him to drop the gun at gunpoint. Either way, that's aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and justifies lethal force. If Gaige's intent had been the latter, for what purpose was Gaige going to disarm Kyle? If Gaige just wanted to walk him to police after seeing him shoot Huber, Gaige could've done that before when he ran up to Kyle and had the short exchange. Kyle was not at all aggressive then.
There were many, MANY opportunities for this to end better, even after the Rosenbaum shooting. The idiot ex-marine should've jogged with Kyle, which probably would've prevented the follow-up attacks and shootings. Kyle could've tried to recruit Gaige to walk with him to the police when Gaige ran up and talked to him, which also might've prevented him getting swarmed. But missed opportunities are not criminal, and once he was on the ground, I think all opportunities for different paths had been taken away from him, and all his actions were reasonable. Even if Huber or Gaige wouldn't have killed Kyle if he'd just let go of his gun and put his hands up, other people might have, given the shouts of the crowd.
I should add that although it's not in the record, Gaige's problems go beyond DUI. He had a suspended sentence for burglary when he was like 18-20 (so charges show up on his record but no conviction even though he pled to it—he and some friends stole some electronics from an acquaintance's house if I recall the police report correctly). When he was 17 he got into an argument with his grandmother, slapped her and threw a lamp at a wall. When he was 19 he followed/stalked his ex-girlfriend to her new boyfriend's place, got mad that his ex-girlfriend was hanging out with someone else, and smashed her new BF's window.
Police said:
Wenzel was receiving text messages from Grosskreutz before and after the window was shattered, and she replied to one of his messages by saying, "Because wow on top of burglary I don't think your lawyer wants to hear about you breaking windows." Grosskreutz replied to Wenzel's text message by saying, "I'm about to come back and it's not going to be pretty so you better answer."
I'm sure he's reformed somewhat since then, but the bottom line is that Gaige, though not to the degree of Huber or Rosenbaum, has poor impulse control combined with a tendency toward violence, and clearly has no concept of proper behavior when carrying a gun (don't intervene unless you understand the situation clearly). Being a (lapsed) paramedic is certainly an achievement, but it has no bearing on what happened that night.
