Kyle Rittenhouse In Hiding After Violating Bond & Everyone Who Donated to His GoFundMe Made That Possible

Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who has been accused of killing Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, is reportedly missing.

Rittenhouse was able to post bond after allegedly murdering two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which was itself strange. “After all, it is extremely unusual for a defendant facing a charge of First Degree Intentional Homicide in Kenosha County to post cash bond and be released from custody pending trial,” wrote Kenosha’s Assistant DA in court filings. “Rarely does our community see accused murderers roaming about freely.”

And Rittenhouse sure is taking advantage of that freedom. He’s so free, in fact, that detectives don’t know where he is.

Prosecutors have reportedly made several attempts to contact Rittenhouse. The now-18-year-old has moved out of his home and failed to report his move or his new address, which he is supposed to do within 48 hours. He has not lived at his old address since at least mid-December.

Rittenhouse’s former attorney says that Kyle and his family have moved to a “‘Safe House’ in an unidentified location” after receiving death threats. (The attorney also says he was instructed by a police captain not to list that address on Rittenhouse’s bond form and to use the old address instead, but CNN hasn’t been able to get a comment from that captain and emails from the Assistant DA show a denial of the request to keep that address private.)

Rittenhouse is out on a $2 million bond, but he might not feel any need to actually comply with the terms of his bail since none of that money was his or his family’s. Instead, it came from online crowdfunding campaigns. In addition to rightwing figures like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr’s public defenses of Rittenhouse, there were a whole lot of individual people who felt the need to help out a person who allegedly (as captured in video) killed two Black Lives Matter protesters and injured more.

Prosecutors are attempting to get Rittenhouse’s bond increased by $200,000 since the entirety of the original $2 million came from such a “dubious” source but of course now they can’t locate him. They already sought to change the terms of his bond once before, after he was seen drinking in a bar with Proud Boys (and his mother, which makes it legal to drink as a minor in Wisconsin), wearing a t-shirt reading “Free as Fuck” and flashing the “OK” symbol, which has been taken up as a sort of calling card by white supremacists. This was about 90 minutes after his arraignment.

A judge updated the terms of his bond to prohibit him from displaying racist signs or associating with known members of white supremacist groups.

His trial is set to begin March 29th.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated Rittenhouse transported a weapon across state lines. That initial report turned out to be incorrect, and Rittenhouse obtained his weapon from a friend, who has been charged with illegally giving a rifle to a minor. Thank you to the reader who pointed out the mistake.

(via HuffPost, CNN, Cassidy Williams on Twitter, image: JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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