Seen and Unseen by Marc Lamont Hill & Todd Brewster

Author:Marc Lamont Hill & Todd Brewster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

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Kristan T. Harris was not the only videographer at the scene in Kenosha on August 25, 2020. Richie McGinniss of the Daily Caller, a right-wing news site founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his Trinity College roommate, Neil Patel, was there, too. So was Brendan Gutenschwager, who publishes through Storyful, a site that describes itself as the “first social media news wire,” aggregating information from Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and many other sites to “deliver clarity in a world of confusion.” (Storyful is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, generally known as News Corp and parent of Fox). There were also hundreds, if not thousands, of people recording the scenes on their cell phones.

A few months after the events, Harris posted a longer, two-and-a-half-hour assemblage from that night that used his own video as well as that of forty-four additional sources. He synchronized the footage so the entire scene unfolded in real time, allowing viewers to watch while following the time of day down to the tenth of a second. (It’s a remarkable achievement in video editing.) And it is there, at the spot marked by Harris as 23:47:37 p.m., that the film picks up a confrontation between the teenager Kyle Rittenhouse and Joe Rosenbaum, a thirty-six-year-old man who suffered from bipolar disease and had only that afternoon been released from a psychiatric hospital where he had been placed for monitoring after a suicide attempt. At 23:48:37 the camera shows Rittenhouse, his AR-15 at the ready, running by a second Car Source garage with Rosenbaum in pursuit. Rosenbaum throws a plastic bag at Rittenhouse, but he misses his target. At 23:48:44, a BLM protester fires a warning shot in the air. The video is unclear on what happens next, but eyewitnesses reported that as they entered the car lot, Rittenhouse turned around to face Rosenbaum, who then reached out in the direction of Rittenhouse’s rifle. In the video, we hear four shots ring out, and Rosenbaum is down.

Rittenhouse waits a few seconds while one of the videographers—McGinniss—kneels to attend to the man. McGinniss tells Rittenhouse to call 911. Instead, he turns and runs from the scene, speaking into his cell phone. You can’t tell from the video, but it’s later reported that he said, audibly, “I just killed somebody!” That exclamation—whether delivered in exaltation or in shock—prompts the crowd to recognize him as a shooter on the loose.

We hear “Cranium that boy! He just shot a man” at 23:49. “Why’d he shoot him?” someone asks incredulously. “Why?” In fear, some people run from Rittenhouse; others move toward him with the intention of stopping him in his tracks. Rittenhouse, running down the street, trips and falls.

Anthony Huber, a twenty-six-year-old who had been a regular at Kenosha BLM protests, throws his skateboard at Rittenhouse’s head. From the ground, in a prone position, Rittenhouse fires his rifle at Huber. In fact, the teenager would shoot three people that night: Rosenbaum, who died of his wounds; Huber, who also died; and Gaige Grosskreutz, a BLM protester who carried a pistol and a medical kit.

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