The second man that Kyle Rittenhouse fatally shot — in a spree that left another man dead and a third wounded — had a criminal history including once threatening to “gut” his brother “like a pig” while holding a butcher’s knife to his stomach, Rittenhouse’s attorney told a judge Friday.
“[Anthony] Huber told his brother that if he didn’t start cleaning a room in his house he was going to gut him like a pig,” Rittenhouse’s lawyer Corey Chirafisi said adding that Huber did this while holding a 6-inch butcher’s knife to the brother’s stomach.
Chirafisi raised 26-year-old victim Huber’s violent past outside of a jury’s presence on the fifth day of the Kenosha County homicide trial for Rittenhouse, 18.
Huber allegedly sat back watching the brother and his grandmother clean while threatening to kill the brother if he stopped, Chirafisi said.
“Huber grabbed his brother by the neck, dug his nails in and choked him for approximately ten seconds,” the lawyer said. “He put a knife to his brother’s left ear and his brother felt it cut.”
“I’m going to burn the house down with all you f—kers in it,” Chirafisi told the judge Huber said.
Huber was criminally charged for the incident and took a plea deal on a strangulation and suffocation charge, Chirafisi said.
Chirafisi told the judge he intended to cross examine Huber’s great-aunt Susan Hughes about the incident if prosecutors were allowed to ask her questions about whether Huber was a peaceful man or a hero.
Ultimately, prosecutors dropped the line of questioning and the jury didn’t hear about the family incident.
Later Friday, Kariann Swart — the fiancée of victim Joseph Rosenbaum, 36 — testified about learning of Rosenbaum’s death the morning after the Aug. 25, 2020 shootings.
“I fell to my knees and cried,” Swart recounted noting that she went onto Facebook where she saw a video of Rosenbaum getting shot. “I can’t get that image out of my head.”
The next morning, Swart said she went with her sister to the scene of where Rosenbaum was killed at a car dealership parking lot.
“There is the mark where Joe had been lying and I put my hand in it and my hand was wet with his blood and that’s, again, when I collapsed on the ground,” Swart testified.
Kenosha Police Officer Pep Moretti also testified later Friday that the city was “a war zone,” further depicting a scene where Kenosha “was burning” and cops “were outnumbered” by masses of protesters, most of whom were carrying weapons.
Rittenhouse faces six criminal charges including intentional homicide and attempted homicide. He faces mandatory life in prison if he’s convicted on the top count.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers argued in opening statements Tuesday that he fired his gun at Rosenbaum in self-defense and that Rosenbaum, the aggressor, “lit the fuse that night.” A third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, survived a gunshot wound from Rittenhouse.
Prosecutors allege that Rittenhouse was acting as a vigilante who shot three people while hundreds of others — outraged over the police shooting of black man Jacob Blake two days earlier — didn’t shoot and kill others.
