Kyle Rittenhouse's second victim had a violent criminal past, defense aruges

Anthony Huber had a violent criminal past in which he assaulted family members, threatened to 'gut his brother like a pig' and to burn down the family home 'with all you f****** in it.'

This is the startling criminal history that Kyle Rittenhouse's defense will try to bring into proceedings should the state push the notion that Huber was a 'peaceable character.'

The jury were not present as defense attorney Corey Chirafisi addressed the judge responding to the state's earlier attempt to paint Huber as 'a hero' during direct examination of Huber's great aunt, Sarah Hughes.

According to the criminal complaints quoted by Chirafisi in one instance, Huber 'hurled a chair,' and armed with a butcher's knife told his brother he would 'gut him like a pig.'

Chirafisi stated, 'Huber told his brother he would kill him. Huber put a knife to his brother's stomach saying he was going to gut him like a pig.

'Huber grabbed his brother by the neck, dug his nails in and choked him for approximately ten seconds. He put a knife to his brother's left ear and his brother felt it cut.

'He said, 'I'm going to burn the house down with all you f*****s in it.'

On another occasion he kicked his sister in her right hip, causing her pain and to fall.

Chirafisi stated, 'they're saying this is a peaceful man. If you're saying that's peaceful this is the [material] we will want to admit.'

Faced with this prospect the state backed away from the attempt to paint Huber a 'hero' so the jury will not hear details of Huber's violent criminal past.   

Jason Lackowski was the first witness of the fourth day of the trial and is an army veteran who traveled to Kenosha to 'protect property.'

Questioned by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, Lackowski, who was armed with an AR-15, a knife and CS canisters that night, said that Rittenhouse's first victim Joseph Rosenbaum asked him to shoot him several times.

Lackowski said, 'He said 'Shoot me,' and used more explicit language than that.

'He had been acting very belligerently. He had asked people very bluntly to shoot him. He did what I would call, ''false-stepping'' to incite someone.'

On Binger's request, Lackowski rose to demonstrate 'false-stepping' to the jurors. He lurched forward from a standing start, in a jarring movement and with his chest puffed out, then simply stepped back.

Despite this, Lackowski said he did not consider Rosenbaum a credible threat to him or anyone else. Instead, he turned his back on him and walked away.

Lackowski is the second prosecution witness whose testimony about Rosenbaum's aggressive behavior and the chaos of the night seems only to add weight to the defense's case that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense when he shot first him, Huber and Grosskreutz.

Yesterday the court heard from key witness, Daily Caller Chief Video Director Richie McGinniss, who described how Rosenbaum had 'lunged' for Rittenhouse's gun having pursued him into a row of parked cars and what appeared to be 'something of a dead end.'

McGinniss painted a compelling picture of the sporadic violence of the night as well as Rosenbaum's erratic and 'menacing' behavior. And he refused to cede to Binger's assertion that the dead man was already falling forward when Rittenhouse shot.

Under increasingly testy direct examination that at times seemed more like a cross-examination of a hostile witness, McGinniss insisted that Rosenbaum was gaining ground on Rittenhouse when he 'lunged forward' and attempted to grab the teen's weapon.

He said that Rosenbaum may have been unable to stop himself from falling face down because of the shot, but would not agree that he had witnessed Rosenbaum fall before the first shot was fired 

Under direct examination Lackowski described the scenes of 'chaos' in downtown Kenosha, earning a reprimand from the judge when he referred to, 'the a**holes who were trying to use the protest to their own gain.'

He explained, 'There were a lot of individuals there to legitimately protest and there were people there to instigate and I noticed there were a lot of people who were using that to cause havoc.

'People throwing things at police, people staring fires, people with mal intent.'

He told the court that he had been trained to, 'Shout, shove, show, shoot.' But that he had never had to take even that second step.

Lackowski testified that Rittenhouse told him he was an EMT and that he assumed he was 18 because of that and the fact that he was carrying a firearm.

Rittenhouse's mother, Wendy, and sister McKenzie were once again in court. They were flanked by security as they have been every day.

Both Rittenhouse and his family have a constant security detail as the teen and his family received multiple threats on their lives since the events of last summer.

Lackowski testified that Rittenhouse had run towards him after shooting all three men. He was, Lackowski said, 'frazzled and in shock,' but when Rittenhouse spoke he said he had NOT shot anybody but needed help. But under cross examination Lackowski said he was 'not at all certain' of that assertion.

Lackowski said, 'I told him to run towards the police [vehicles]'

After that, he said, 'I pretty much blacked out because the next thing I remember is helping Mr. Grosskreutz.'

He said, 'I remember him being on the ground screaming. Somebody was screaming for a tourniquet. I had given that to him, he applied the tourniquet. He had done it wrong so I pushed him out of the way and applied it correctly.'

After the police showed up Lackowski said he noticed Grosskreutz's Glock on the ground and someone walking towards it.

He said, 'I pushed him away, picked up the firearm, dropped the magazine and emptied the chamber.'

Rosenbaum’s fiancé Kariann Swart briefly took the witness stand directly after lunch. She told the court that she had been with Rosenbaum for just over a year and recalled how she and her sister visited the site where he had been shot the morning after.

She said, ‘We went over to the Car Source and there was this mark where Joe had lain. I put my hand in it and my hand was wet with his blood and…I collapsed to the ground.’

Swart had received a telephone call telling her that Rosenbaum was dead at around 4am she said.

She said, ‘I fell to my knees and cried.’

Rosenbaum had visited Swart earlier in the day and she had ‘explicitly told him’ not to go downtown that night because the ‘whole city was up in flames.’

She said that the visit had been ‘pleasant’ and that he had been

read more from dailymail.....