Armed protester demonstrates outside Kenosha courthouse as Kyle Rittenhouse jury resumes deliberations

KENOSHA, WIS. — With an armed protester standing outside the courthouse, jurors in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial began their second day of deliberations Wednesday.

The panel — consisting of seven women and five men — spent more than eight hours deliberating Tuesday without reaching a verdict. Jurors offered few insights into their Day One discussions, sending only two notes asking for copies of jury instructions.

While the predominantly white jury debated the very specific legal question at the heart of the teen’s self-defense case, protesters outside the courthouse have been arguing over the broader issues of gun rights and racial inequities that have loomed large over the case from the onset.

Demonstrations have been low key throughout the trial, but they began to intensify as the jury deliberated. At one point, a group on the courthouse steps chanted “Black Lives Matter,” while a man on a bullhorn needled them about Joseph Rosenbaum, one of the men Rittenhouse killed, being a convicted sex offender.

That same man — who brought his dog to the demonstrations Tuesday — returned Wednesday morning with an AR-15. Wearing a tactical vest, button-down shirt, bow tie with slacks and dress shoes, the man spent part of the morning yelling “Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization” and screaming “(expletive) BLM!” through a megaphone as he stood in the public way across the street from the courthouse.

Kenosha County sheriff’s deputies told the man, who had a Maserati with Illinois plates and called himself “Maserati Mike,” that he could not have the rifle there because he was within 1,000 feet of a school and did not have a concealed carry permit.

“If you want to be here, you’re going to have to put the rifle away,” a deputy said.

Under Wisconsin law, any individual who knowingly possesses a firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is within 1,000 feet of the grounds of a school is subject to a fine up to $1,000. A sheriff’s spokesman said the incident was resolved without action taken against the man when he voluntarily put away his rifle.

Surrounded by cameras as deputies escorted the man away to record his information, a woman came up to criticize him.

“All that attention you didn’t get in high school? Now you got all the attention you want,” she told him. “Isn’t that so cute?”

The man returned to the courthouse without a rifle, though he kept a sound system that blasted “Build a B*tch” by Bella Poarch and “Ride It” by DJ Regard, among other TikTok hits.

Andrew Durham, who grew up in south suburban Markham and moved to Kenosha just as last year’s unrest struck, wandered out of the courthouse after paying a traffic ticket and into the cacophony of Maserati Mike’s soundtrack battling with music pumped by pro-conviction demonstrators.

Taking in the scene, he said the “nonsense” Kenosha has endured has largely been the work of outsiders, and that locals are ready for it to end.

“I feel like there are a lot of people coming from different places to cause havoc and it’s getting blamed on citizens around here,” he said.

The crowds were otherwise sparse compared to the dozens of people who demonstrated outside the courthouse Tuesday. Though most who showed up over the last two weeks pressed for a conviction, more Rittenhouse supporters have turned up since deliberations began.

Rittenhouse, then a 17-year-old resident of north suburban Antioch, Illinois, volunteered to patrol downtown Kenosha in August 2020 amid turmoil surrounding the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man left partially paralyzed after being shot by a white police officer during a domestic disturbance call days earlier. Prosecutors later declined to charge the officer with wrongdoing.

Carrying an AR-15-style rifle that police say a friend illegally purchased for him, Rittenhouse fatally shot Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz during the third night of unrest in the city. Rittenhouse is charged with reckless homicide, intentional homicide and attempted intentional homicide related to his actions toward the men, respectively.

Rittenhouse, who faces five felony charges for his actions that night, has pleaded not guilty and said he shot the men in self-defense.

———