Kyle Rittenhouse Used His COVID-19 Stimulus Check To Purchase The AR-15 He Used In The Fatal Kenosha Shooting

Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse used his COVID-19 stimulus check to purchase the gun he brought to the Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin.

On Aug. 25, 17-year-old Rittenhouse used an AR-15 to fatally shoot two men in Kenosha. During a telephone call with the Washington Post on Thursday, the Illinois native told the news outlet that he doesn’t regret shooting the men because he believes he acted in self-defense. 

He added that he used the money Americans received from the government amid the pandemic to fund his purchase of the gun. On top of that, he knew he wasn’t of legal age to buy the gun, so he asked his friend, Dominick Black, in Kenosha, to purchase it for him. “I got my $1,200 from the coronavirus Illinois unemployment because I was on furlough from YMCA and I got my first unemployment check, so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll use this to buy it,’” Rittenhouse said in his first jailhouse interview, NBC News reports. 

Rittenhouse traveled 20 miles armed, saying that he went to Kenosha to protect local businesses and give out medical aid during protests. “I was going into a place where people had guns, and god forbid somebody brought a gun to me and decided to shoot me … I wanted to be protected, which I ended up having to protect myself,” Rittenhouse told the newspaper.

As far as regretting the night as a whole, he says he doesn’t. “No, I don’t regret it,” he said. “I would have died that night if I didn’t. I feel like I had to protect myself.” That fatal night Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber lost their lives. Black told police that Rittenhouse kept the gun at the Kenosha home of Black’s stepfather, Scott Dickhart.

Back in October, Rittenhouse was extradited from Illinois to Wisconsin; he says he plans to plead not guilty to all charges.