How many black men did kyle rittenhouse shoot?

Checked on January 24, 2026
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Executive summary

Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men on Aug. 25, 2020 — he killed two men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz (three people shot in total) [1] [2]. The sources supplied document who was shot and the legal outcome, but they do not consistently identify the race of each of the three men, so the reporting provided here does not support a definitive count of “how many Black men” Rittenhouse shot.

1. The act on the night in question: who was shot

On August 25, 2020, amid unrest after police shot Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse fired on a group in Kenosha and struck three men: Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber were killed and Gaige Grosskreutz was wounded [2] [3]. Multiple national outlets summarized the same core fact set — two dead, one wounded — and identified the three by name in contemporaneous coverage and trial reporting [1] [4].

2. What the provided reporting says — and what it does not say — about race

The supplied news accounts and trial coverage delivered names, ages and circumstances of each shooting but do not uniformly state the race of Rosenbaum, Huber or Grosskreutz in the excerpts provided to this briefing; the materials focus on roles, actions that night, and legal arguments rather than cataloguing each victim’s race [3] [2] [4]. Because the question asked is explicitly about race, it must be noted that the current set of sources does not offer a clear, consistent attribution of race for all three men, so a claim like “Rittenhouse shot X Black men” cannot be supported from these sources alone.

3. Why race enters the frame in broader coverage

Race became a major theme in national discussion of the Kenosha events because the unrest followed the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by police — a central context repeatedly cited in reporting and legal narratives about the protests that night [2]. Wikipedia’s overview of the Kenosha unrest shooting explicitly says “race was a major theme in U.S. media” around the episode [5]. That contextual emphasis helps explain why many discussions of Rittenhouse’s actions also explored racial dimensions, even where specific reporting about the three men’s races is not always foregrounded.

4. The courtroom record and how victims were described there

Trial reporting emphasized whether Rittenhouse acted in self-defense and the judge’s restrictions on language in court: the presiding judge barred the prosecution from calling the three men “victims,” allowing instead terms like “complaining witness” or evidence-based characterizations such as “rioters” or “looters” if supported by proof [6] [7]. Coverage of the verdict notes the jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts related to the shootings [1], but that legal outcome does not change the factual record that three men were shot and two died [2].

5. A careful answer to the explicit question

Based on the reporting provided, Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men — two were killed (Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber) and one, Gaige Grosskreutz, was wounded [2] [3]. The supplied articles and trial coverage in this packet do not consistently identify the race of each of those three men, so the sources here do not allow a definitive, source-supported number for “how many Black men” were shot by Rittenhouse; any answer asserting a specific racial count would require additional reporting that explicitly documents the victims’ races.

Want to dive deeper?
What are the documented racial identities of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz in primary news and public records?
How did media outlets vary in their emphasis on race when covering the Kenosha shootings and the Rittenhouse trial?
What did the trial transcripts and official police reports say about the identities and backgrounds of the three men shot by Rittenhouse?