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Kyle Rittenhouse faces a wrongful death lawsuit after private investigators spent over 100 hours trying to find him to serve him the papers.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a federal judge in Wisconsin, ruled that a lawsuit filed by the father of a man Rittenhouse shot and killed in 2020 may proceed, according to PBS.
Rittenhouse, then-17, traveled from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin to attend a police brutality protest, which formed after police shot Jacob Blake in the back, paralyzing him.
Claiming he was there to back up the police, the underaged vigilante ultimately shot and killed two people, 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and 26-year-old Anthony Huber. He also shot and wounded a trained medic, 29-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz.
“One step closer to justice”
Anthony Huber’s father filed the wrongful death lawsuit in 2021, which also accuses officers of allowing for a dangerous situation that violated his son’s constitutional rights and resulted in his death.
The ruling puts Anthony Huber’s family “one step closer to justice for their son’s needless death,” said Anand Swaminathan, an attorney for Anthony Huber’s parents.
“The Kenosha officials that created a powder keg situation by their actions tried to claim that they cannot be held accountable for their unconstitutional conduct; that argument was soundly rejected today,” Swaminathan said in a statement.
Acting as if he were deputized by officers, Kyle Rittenhouse first shot and killed Rosenbaum in the parking lot of a car dealership. After Huber tried to disarm Rittenhouse by hitting him with a skateboard, Rittenhouse fell and shot Huber to death. He eventually went on to wound Grosskreutz, who has also filed a lawsuit.
Wrongful death lawsuit catches up to Kyle Rittenhouse
Rittenhouse, the then-underaged gun wielder, became a hero of far-right conservatives after being found not guilty in November 2021 by a judge who was criticized for allegedly showing favoritism. It came after he made himself cry on the witness stand, an act some claimed was a strategy to appeal to the jury.
Meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse went on to mock his opponents after he was cleared of all charges by announcing lawsuits against media outlets and a new video game in which users shoot media outlets shaped as turkeys.
Huber’s attorneys and private investigators spent over 100 hours across seven states trying to track down Rittenhouse to serve him the papers before they finally found him at his sister and mother’s house in Florida. Rittenhouse tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, saying he wasn’t properly served, but the judge declined his request.
“Rittenhouse has been deliberately cagey about his whereabouts,” Judge Adelman wrote. “Although he denies living in Florida, he does not identify the place that he deems to be his residence.”
Kyle Rittenhouse has since created a fundraiser for his far-right supporters to donate to his legal fees.