The prosecutor apologized for playing it, saying he had to do it.Īcross the room, Rittenhouse appeared to look away from his desktop monitor and cast his eyes downward as the video showed Rosenbaum bleeding from the head, groaning loudly. I would use those as synonymous terms in this situation because basically, you know, he threw his momentum towards the weapon.”Īs prosecutors played footage of Rosenbaum lying fatally wounded in a car lot, McGinniss struggled to keep his composure on the stand, rapidly inhaling and exhaling, then averting his eyes from a video monitor. In his testimony, McGinniss said that as Rosenbaum lunged, Rittenhouse “kind of dodged around” with his weapon and then leveled the gun and fired.īinger repeatedly tried to get McGinniss to say Rosenbaum was not “lunging” but “falling” when he was shot, as McGinniss said in a media interview days after the shooting.īut McGinniss said: “He was lunging, falling. The prosecutor also elicited testimony from McGinniss and Balch that affirmed Rosenbaum was not armed that night and did not actually hurt anyone. “Well,” McGinniss replied, “he said, `F- you.' And then he reached for the weapon.”īut McGinniss also appeared to boost the prosecution’s case when he said he had a sense that something bad could happen that night because of all the guns in the area. In an attempt to undo some of the damage done by his own witness, prosecutor Thomas Binger said McGinniss' testimony about what Rosenbaum was intending to do was “complete guesswork.” It is one of the few moments not clearly captured on video. The killing of Rosenbaum, 36, has emerged as one of the most crucial and disputed moments of the night. Prosecutors have portrayed Rittenhouse as the instigator of the bloodshed, while his lawyer has argued that he acted in self-defense, suggesting among other things that Rittenhouse had reason to fear his weapon would be taken away and used against him.
Ryan Balch, a former Army infantryman who carried an AR-style rifle that night and walked around patrolling the streets with Rittenhouse, testified that Rosenbaum was “hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner,” including trying to set fires and throwing rocks.īalch said he got between Rosenbaum and another man while Rosenbaum was trying to start a fire, and Rosenbaum got angry, shouting, “If I catch any of you guys alone tonight I’m going to f- kill you!”īalch said that Rittenhouse was within earshot and that he believed the threat was aimed at both of them. “I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon,” McGinniss said. Richie McGinniss, who was recording events on a cellphone that night for the conservative website The Daily Caller, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot that night, was killed after chasing down Rittenhouse and making a lunge for the gun.
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