The testimony underscores the prosecutors’ challenge in disproving a self-defense claim. Gaige Grosskreutz, who was armed, was shot while responding to an earlier shooting.
Gaige Grosskreutz, the only person who survived being shot by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020, took the witness stand on Monday and described the instant he faced Mr. Rittenhouse, who had just fired several shots with a semiautomatic rifle. “What was going through your mind at this particular moment?” Thomas Binger, the prosecutor, asked in court. “That I was going to die,” Mr. Grosskreutz, a volunteer paramedic, said. As the prosecution’s case in the homicide trial of Mr. Rittenhouse nears an end, Mr. Grosskreutz,28, calmly delivered testimony for several hours as a star witness for the state. But his testimony at times lent support to Mr. Rittenhouse’s central claim, that he was acting in self-defense when he shot Mr. Grosskreutz and two other men. The testimony underscored a broader challenge for prosecutors, who face the burden of disproving the scenario laid out by Mr. Rittenhouse’s lawyers. Those lawyers have argued that Mr. Rittenhouse fired in self-defense during a chaotic, lawless night in Kenosha on the third night of protests and rioting after the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Aug.23,2020. The first man Mr. Rittenhouse shot, Joseph Rosenbaum, was erratic and threatening to people on the street that night, the defense has said, and in the split second before Mr. Rittenhouse shot him, Mr. Rosenbaum lunged in his direction and reached for his weapon. After Mr. Rittenhouse shot him four times and fled down the street, he shot two others who were pursuing him, Anthony Huber and Mr. Grosskreutz. “I thought that the defendant was an active shooter,” said Mr. Grosskreutz, who also testified that he came to the protests to provide medical help to people who needed it. Under cross-examination by a lawyer for Mr. Rittenhouse, Mr. Grosskreutz gave testimony that suggested his role in the events of Aug.25,2020, was complicated. Like Mr. Rittenhouse, Mr. Grosskreutz was armed that night, and he was asked why he had falsely told police detectives shortly after the shooting that his Glock pistol had fallen out of its holster that night — rather than saying he had pulled it out, as visual evidence showed.
