A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject 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”.

Hancock nonetheless said he initially believed Rittenhouse’s claims of self-defense when he first relayed his story about fatally shooting Rosenbaum and Huber. Yet that changed when he later became aware of text messages that surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the men slain in Kenosha demanding wrongful death damages from Rittenhouse.

  • Soup@lemmy.cafe
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    41 minutes ago

    All those people that defended this douche when I said there was proof of intention that was dismissed by a biased judge can fuck all the way off.

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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    48 minutes ago

    Let’s be honest. Many, if not most, of us talked big when we were that age. The texts are just that. This is a kid with an inferiority complex trying to be seen as a tough guy. His actions that night were more like the coward he is inside. Which is not meant as an insult really. But he ran away. And to me he really did fire in the legal definition of self defense. The crime here is that he was there and armed at all. And further that society failed to help this kid find productive ways to prove his worth to himself. Kids aren’t born like this.

  • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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    7 hours ago

    Wait are you trying to tell me that the kid who took a gun he didn’t own to a state he didn’t live in to shoot protestors he didn’t know ostensibly to protect businesses he’s unaffiliated with wanted to kill people?? Wow I am shocked. Shocked!

    Honestly of course he wanted to murder people, anyone who disputes that is and has always been deliberately lying.

    • mycelium underground@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      While great in this application, overall this is an extremely shit idea. Do you really think the same court that let the dipshit go wouldn’t abuse the change by trying the poor and minorities over and over until charges stick?

      Life is complicated, think through the consequences of your ideas.

      Edit: spelling

  • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    I’m not seeing any messages about murdering shoplifters thought. The only examples given were:

    “I wish they would come into my house.”

    “I will fucking murder them.”

      • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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        3 hours ago

        He’s talking about shooting people coming to his house but the title talks about shooting shoplifters

        • workerONE@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          “The texts were in response to seeing shoplifters at a CVS pharmacy on 10 August”

          When he says “I wish they would come into my house”, the word they refers to the shoplifters. When he says he will murder them he is still referring to the shoplifters.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Sounds like the article is a little confused, or this is brand new stuff, which is possible.

      The comments about wanting to murder people that I knew about came him and a friend filming Black people leaving a cvs and them “knowing” they were all shoplifters and wanting to kill them for it. They’d just go sit outside drug stores because of propaganda and “filming subjects”.

      There was also the video where he tried to jump a younger girl and when 3 black guys (his age) yelled at him not to hit a young girl. He immediately fell to the ground in a fetal position and started crying and begging, literally that was his reaction to being told not to beat a young girl.

      Those two examples together showed he didn’t have the same basic reactions to a situation any normal human would have. And that he can’t properly identify risks.