(NewsNation Now) — Protesters gathered on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in the shooting of three men in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
In Queens, police say protesters damaged property and shared a photo of a car with broken windows and an SUV with profanity spray painted on it.
“No justice, no peace. F— these racist-a– police,” a video shows them chanting.
Another video shows them taking a knee on the bridge.
Rittenhouse, 18, was acquitted after being accused of illegally killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, now 27, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a night of protests after police shot Jacob Blake in 2020.
But Rittenhouse argued he shot the three men in self-defense, and the jury ruled in his favor Friday.
The verdict sparked emotional reaction. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) called it “white supremacy in action.”
But legal experts say the prosecution had a difficult task in the trial. They needed to prove Rittenhouse did something to forfeit his right to self-defense.
April Preyar, a criminal defense attorney, said Rittenhouse’s poise on the witness stand was noticeable.
“In a self-defense claim, you have to put on some sort of evidence to back up the self-defense, and the best way to do that is from the person who was saying that they defended themselves so that you can hear from their mouth why they did it,” Preyar said on “NewsNation Prime” on Friday.
Wisconsin’s complicated gun laws also may have spared Rittenhouse a conviction. Initially, it seemed prosecutors would get a conviction on a misdemeanor count of possessing a weapon Rittenhouse was not old enough to have, but the gun did not fit the exact description provided in the law, so Judge Bruce Schroeder tossed it.