Kyle Rittenhouse texts vowing to 'murder' rioters and disillusion his ex-speaker | Kyle Rittenhouse

A former spokesman for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he sent text messages promising “fucking murder” to shoplifters outside a Chicago pharmacy before he was killed during racial justice protests in 2020 Wisconsin shot two people.

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

As Hancock said in “The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse,” the main theme of the 90-minute film was “a story of things he had done before.” [the double slaying]”In particular, he patrolled the streets for months with guns and borrowed people's security uniforms and did everything he could to try to get into some kind of fight.”

But Hancock said he initially believed Rittenhouse's self-defense claims when he first told his story about the fatal shooting of Rosenbaum and Huber. But that changed when he later became aware of text messages that had surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the men killed in Kenosha seeking wrongful death damages from Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse sent the text message from the phone he had the night of the Aug. 25 double murder in Kenosha, Hancock says in the new film. The text messages were in response to the sight of shoplifters at a CVS store in Chicago on August 10, just over two weeks before the deadly shooting in Kenosha.

“The world is disgusting,” reads one of the texts seen in a preview of “The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse” provided to the Guardian. Another said: “It makes me [fucking] sick.

Others read: “I wish they would come to my house.”

“I’m going to fucking murder her.”

Commenting on the texts while speaking to Law & Crime chief correspondent Brian Ross, Hancock said: “Here's his head – you know what I mean?”

He also said, “My first impression was of a scared, arrogant child, oblivious to the world around him.” When he told me the story, I believed he was serious.

“I believed things he told me that I now understand to be one of his many lies. And that hurts. That sucks.”

About two weeks later, Rittenhouse, then 17, was traveling 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha when protests erupted after a white police officer shot and killed Jacob Blake, who was black. Blake's shooting came about three months after a white Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, in full view of a cellphone recording video.

While roaming the streets of Kenosha with other armed men posing as security guards, Rittenhouse fatally shot 36-year-old Rosenbaum and 26-year-old Huber with a rifle. He also injured a third man and was charged with five felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide.

Rittenhouse claimed to the jury at his criminal trial that he carried out the shootings in self-defense and that his actions were justified. Jurors ultimately found Rittenhouse not guilty of all charges against him in November 2021, with far-right politicians and pundits hailing the verdict as a major legal victory and civil rights activists denouncing the outcome.

The wrongful death lawsuit against Rittenhouse remains pending.

Hancock served as Rittenhouse's spokesman and security guard beyond the acquittal.

Shortly after the verdict was read, Hancock spoke at length to news media reporters, saying, “You're going to see some good things from Kyle because he's very pragmatic about what happened.”

Hancock was also involved in the effort to publish a book by Rittenhouse, characterizing the volume as “a story about a young man's very unorthodox journey into adulthood, what it took to make it, and the lessons he learned along the way.” learned”.

But by the time The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse debuted, Hancock had already left those positions behind.

Rittenhouse's book reportedly bombed on Amazon's Kindle platform. Recently, the self-proclaimed gun rights activist announced that he would not support Donald Trump in the November White House election, before hate speech on social media successfully pressured him to support the former president.

“The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse” is scheduled to air again Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Law & Crime, which airs on basic cable packages and streaming services such as YouTube TV and Peacock. It is also available on demand, a network spokesman said.