Kyle Rittenhouse, who rose to notoriety after killing two people and wounding a third with his AR-15 during riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020, fled the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis Wednesday as Black Lives Matter protesters stormed the event.
Video shows Rittenhouse, 21, rushing off the stage after protesters, some of whom were carrying signs that read “put Rittenhouse behind bars not a podium” and “no killers on my campus," started booing loudly, The New York Post reported.
A jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts in his murder trial after he testified that he acted in self-defense during the 2020 shooting. The two people killed by Rittenhouse are 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum, and 26-year-old Anthony Huber. Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, was wounded.
Although there's no video of Rosenbaum's killing, Rittenhouse's defense was able to prove that Rosenbaum reached for Rittenhouse's gun and attacked him before he was shot in the head. Video shows Huber chasing down Rittenhouse with a mob of protesters and trying to strike him over the head with a skateboard before he was shot. Grosskreutz admitted during testimony that he was pointing his own gun at Rittenhouse when he was shot.
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Before Rittenhouse's exit, video shows a protester questioning Rittenhouse about Charlie Kirk, the far-right founder of Turning Point U.S.A. which sponsored Rittenhouse’s appearance, saying Kirk has "said a lot of racist things."
“Like what? What racist things has Charlie Kirk said?” Rittenhouse replied. “We’re gonna have a bit of a dialogue of what racist things Charlie Kirk said.”
“He says that we shouldn't celebrate Juneteenth, we shouldn’t celebrate Martin Luther King Day — we should be working those days. He called [SCOTUS Justice] Ketanji Brown Jackson an affirmative action hire, he said all this nonsense about George Floyd, and he said he’d be scared if a Black pilot was on a plane. Does that not seem racist?” the protester said.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Rittenhouse replied, prompting a chorus of boos.
“After all the things I just told you, would you consider that hate speech?” the protester asked.
“I’m not gonna comment on that,” Rittenhouse answered before the room once again erupted in boos, eventually prompting Rittenhouse to leave the stage.
Watch the video below or at this link.