Joseph Rosenbaum was shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse on August 25, 2020. Rittenhouse was tried and acquitted for the shooting of Rosenbaum and two other individuals. A jury decided he had acted in self-defense and found him not guilty of all charges. But Rittenhouse has now been sued twice over the incident. Earlier this year he was sued by Gaige Grosskreutz:

Gaige Grosskreutz, who testified that he pointed a firearm at Rittenhouse before the then-teenager shot Grosskreutz and two others, is seeking economic losses, “damages for emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and other pain and suffering on all claims,” and punitive damages.

In case you’ve forgotten, Grosskreutz was the guy who was chasing Rittenhouse down the street with a loaded Glock in his hand. One of the key moments in the trial came when he admitted on the stand during cross examination that Rittenhouse didn’t fire so long as his hands were up in surrender but did fire once he lunged forward and aimed his gun at Rittenhouse.

In any case, today the estate of Joseph Rosenbaum has also filed a lawsuit against Rittenhouse and the city of Kenosha and its police department:

The estate of Joseph Rosenbaum is suing Rittenhouse, Kenosha officials, local sheriff’s departments, the City of Kenosha, the City of West Allis and several counties for “compensatory and punitive damages” for the “wrongful death” of Rosenbaum, according to a report in Texas Scorecard…

The lawsuit filed in a federal district court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin claims Rosenbaum suffered a “wrongful death” and, as a consequence, his survivors “have suffered, and continue to suffer, significant emotional distress and harm, including but not limited to the loss of society and companionship with Rosenbaum.”

The legal complaint is here and as a summary of the facts it leaves a lot to be desired:

Defendant Rittenhouse possessed a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223 rifle, with a magazine holding 30 rounds of ammunition. This weapon was developed in the late 1950s as a weapon of war…

Numerous KPD and KCSD officers saw Defendant Rittenhouse before and after the shootings that night, as did many of the Additionally Responding Officers. Despite being in clear violation of Wisconsin law, Defendant Rittenhouse was not asked for identification, was not questioned, was never detained, and was not disarmed.

Instead, the Law Enforcement Defendants allowed Defendant Rittenhouse to patrol the streets of downtown Kenosha with his deadly assault rifle, they invited him in, deputized him, conspired with him, and ratified his actions.

As a result of the Law Enforcement Defendants’ actions, within the zone they controlled, Defendant Rittenhouse shot at four Kenosha-area residents, killing two of them and seriously injuring a third.

Around 11:45 p.m., Defendant Rittenhouse shot Joseph Rosenbaum in the parking lot of an auto dealership. Rosenbaum was killed.

Joseph Rosenbaum was not a danger to himself or others and Rittenhouse used unjustified excessive force in shooting and killing him.

There was no justification for Defendant Rittenhouse to point his weapon at Joseph Rosenbaum.

There was no justification for Defendant Rittenhouse to shoot and kill Joseph Rosenbaum.

That leaves out a tremendous amount of information about what happened that night and about Joseph Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum had been sexually abused as a child and when he was 18 he was sentenced to a decade in prison for child molestation. His stay in prison was a long list of behavioral problems. He eventually got out and was living as a homeless person on the street with a girlfriend.

On July 18, 2020, Rosenbaum got angry after his fiancé discovered porn on his phone. He started shouting at her and then got violent, body slamming her to the floor and leaving her with bruises and bleeding from the mouth. There was another person present for the violent part of the altercation so there was a third party witness who confirmed the fiancé’s account of what happened. Rosenbaum was arrested.

He was out a couple days later and sent a text to the fiancé apologizing. About an hour later he took a bunch of pills outside a Kenosha McDonalds but called police to let them know what he’d done. After five days in the hospital he recovered enough that he was arrested for contacting the fiancé in violation of an order preventing him from doing so. He spent three weeks in jail and then was released to a mental health facility. He was released from the facility on the morning of August 25, the day he was killed.

He once again violated the order to stay away from his fiancé and spent several hours talking to her at a motel and apologizing. She refused to let him stay and he later wound up downtown arguing with people and pushing a flaming dumpster. He chased Rittenhouse through a parking lot, threw a bag of items at him and kept running after him. At that moment, someone else fired a gun. A witness testified that Rosenbaum had lunged at Rittenhouse trying to grab his gun before he was shot three times.

After the above description of the shooting of Rosenbaum the complaint continues:

Gaige Grosskreutz approached Defendant Rittenhouse with his hands up, pleading with him to stop his shooting rampage. Without provocation or any legal justification, Defendant Rittenhouse shot at Grosskreutz from point-blank range, hitting him in the arm. Thankfully, Grosskreutz survived.

Gaige Grosskreutz was a hero.

Again, notice all of the things left out of this very one-sided description, starting with the fact that Grosskreutz had a loaded gun in his hand.

There have been lots of articles written saying that while Kyle Rittenhouse deserved to be acquitted he is not a hero. Maybe that’s true but Joseph Rosenbaum certainly wasn’t a hero either. This lawsuit reads to me like an attempt to get money out of the city of Kenosha. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if a jury buys it.