After teen is charged with killing 2 at protests over Jacob Blake shooting, turmoil in Kenosha spreads and reaches new heights

Meg Jones
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The turmoil in Kenosha reached new proportions Wednesday as the Trump administration authorized sending National Guard troops from other states to Wisconsin, the Bucks and Brewers canceled their games, and police arrested an Illinois teen who allegedly gunned down two protesters and injured another.

In addition, late Wednesday the Wisconsin Department of Justice named the Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back on Sunday night. He is a seven year veteran of the force. The DOJ also said Blake had a knife in his vehicle, although it did not say whether a determination had been made about whether Blake was going for it as he ignored police orders.

The focus much of Wednesday, however, was on the shootings Tuesday night.

Court records show Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch, Illinois, was charged in Lake County, Illinois, as a fugitive from justice. That document, reviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said he faces a first-degree intentional homicide charge in Kenosha County.

According to videos, interviews and social media posts, Rittenhouse fancied himself a member of a militia aiming to protect life and property. Rittenhouse is seen in a video with armed men who said they were protecting a car lot in Kenosha. 

Antioch Police Department Commander Norm Johnson told a Journal Sentinel reporter that Rittenhouse was arrested Wednesday morning and is now in the Lake County judicial system. Johnson was not aware of anyone else being sought in the fatal shootings in Kenosha. 

Since Rittenhouse was taken into custody in Illinois, Wisconsin must file documents to extradite him to the state to face homicide charges in Kenosha County.

The warrant referenced in Lake County records is not yet listed in Wisconsin online court records. Based on Wisconsin law, Rittenhouse would be charged as an adult.

Law enforcement officers investigate the scene where a 26-year-old man was shot over night near the corner of 63rd and Sheridan Avenue on Wednesday following the third night of unrest in Kenosha.

Kenosha has been under siege since Sunday, when video of Kenosha police shooting Blake in the back swiftly went viral, much like the horrific footage of George Floyd suffocating at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May.

Protests following the shooting included some peaceful marching, but also looting and vandalism that left several businesses in ruins, and cars and city garbage trucks destroyed by fire.

Tuesday night, however, the unrest reached a new, deadly level.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said that police told protesters they needed to leave the area outside the Kenosha County Courthouse on Tuesday night when the clock reached the 8 p.m. curfew. Some did, but others began "pelting the officers over the fence with stones, bricks and Molotov cocktails."

"We gave them 10 to 15 minutes and tear gassed to disperse the crowd," Beth said. "It's not something we wanted to do, but with the damage and everything that went on Monday night it is something we had to do." 

Protesters then headed down Sheridan Road several blocks from the courthouse square.

RELATED:Much of Kenosha's deadly protest shooting was captured on social media videos. Here's what they show.

In addition to law enforcement, protesters and bystanders, videos showed armed men and women acting as if they were authority figures. Multiple videos show one armed teen wearing jeans, a green T-shirt, and light ball cap turned backward. He is carrying an AR-15 lightweight rifle similar to the military's M-16 and M-4 carbines, though the AR-15 is not fully automatic.

In several videos, the teen appears to shoot a protester in the head in a parking lot, then run off. In others, he can be seen racing by foot down Sheridan Road as people chase him. He stumbles to the ground, spins around and shoots one man in the abdomen and another in the arm, both at virtually point-blank range.

Authorities did not release the victims' names but said the two killed were a 26-year-old man from the Kenosha County community of Silver Lake and a 36-year-old Kenosha man. 

Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, of West Allis was shot in the arm and is expected to survive. Grosskreutz was in Kenosha with the social justice reform group the People's Revolution Movement of Milwaukee.

More law enforcement 

Tuesday's night's violence prompted the White House to authorize sending 2,000 National Guard troops from other states to Wisconsin. President Donald Trump said Wednesday in a series of tweets that “federal law enforcement and the National Guard” will be sent to Kenosha to restore law and order.

The Wisconsin National Guard already has 10,000 troops. Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday ordered 250 to Kenosha. He doubled the number Wednesday, and they were to be in the city Wednesday night.

Beth said Wednesday afternoon that the city's curfew will be moved up an hour to 7 p.m. effective through Sunday.

Wisconsin Adjutant General Paul Knapp, whose soldiers and airmen were called to several other cities this summer for protests following the killing of Floyd, said militias are not needed in Kenosha.

"No, I don’t need more guns on the street in the community when we’re trying to keep people safe. Law enforcement is trained. They are the ones who should do the job. It would be helpful for everyone to realize that," Knapp, a major general, said at the news conference. 

Beth echoed those remarks, saying that on Tuesday someone called him to ask why he didn't deputize armed citizens to patrol the city "and I’m like ‘Oh hell no.’ What happened last night is the perfect reason why I wouldn’t."

Deputized citizens would "fall under my guidance and my supervisors and they are a liability to me and the county and the state of Wisconsin. The incident that happened last night where two people lost their lives were part of this group that wanted me to deputize them. That would have been ... one deputy sheriff who killed two people," Beth said.

What Beth couldn't answer specifically was why a number of videos show law enforcement before the shootings casually interacting with the armed men and women. In one video, police give them water and a voice can be heard saying, "We appreciate you guys, we really do."

Further, after the street shootings, the gunman heads toward toward several police tactical vehicles, his arms raised. The tactical vehicles drive by him toward the victims lying on the ground.

The sheriff said that although he was not at the scene, he can understand what might have happened.

"There was screaming, there's hollering, there's chanting, there's a squad car running, there's (armored vehicles) idling. If the officer happened to be in the car, the radio traffic was nonstop" and it's possible he didn't know what just happened, said Beth.

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said local, state and federal officials have responded to the city since Sunday's unrest.

Antaramian expressed his condolences to Tuesday night's victims.

"What is happening to them is wrong," the mayor said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference. "People have differences of opinion. We have different concepts on how things should be done, but violence in the community is not acceptable. Violence to property, violence to people is absolutely unacceptable."

NBA playoff games postponed

Upset about the shooting of Blake and the deaths of the two men Tuesday night, the Milwaukee Bucks took the unprecedented step of walking out shortly before their playoff game Wednesday afternoon against the Orlando Magic

Soon after the Bucks left the arena in Orlando, Florida, the NBA postponed the rest of Wednesday's games. The games will be rescheduled.

The Milwaukee Brewers followed the lead of the Bucks on Wednesday afternoon and voted not to play their game against Cincinnati scheduled for 7:10 p.m. at Miller Park. It was not immediately known if the game would be rescheduled.

The violence Tuesday came as the Department of Justice released the name of the officer who shot Blake.

"Officer Rusten Sheskey fired his service weapon 7 times," the DOJ said. "Officer Sheskey fired the weapon into Mr. Blake’s back. No other officer fired their weapon. Kenosha Police Department does not have body cameras, therefore the officers were not wearing body cameras."

Sheskey has been a law enforcement officer with Kenosha Police Department for seven years.

The DOJ also announced that agents recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Blake’s vehicle, and that Blake admitted to having the weapon. A search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said it has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Blake.

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said he requested the civil rights investigation during a news conference earlier Wednesday. It will run parallel to the state DOJ’s criminal investigation.

Blake's family said on Tuesday that the 29-year-old father of six is paralyzed from the waist down. They also pleaded for calm. 

"Let's use our hearts, our love and our intelligence to work together, to show the rest of the world how humans are supposed to treat each other. America is great when we behave greatly," Blake's mother, Julia Jackson, said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon, hours before the fatal shootings in her community.

Journal Sentinel reporters Jordyn Noennig, Gina Barton, Annysa Johnson, Bruce Vielmetti, Ashley Luthern, Chelsey Lewis, Sarah Volpenhein, Patrick Marley and Bill Glauber contributed to this report.