Kyle Rittenhouse, the us-regions teenager accused of killing two protesters in us-regions during a period of civil unrest, has received thousands of dollars in donations for his legal defense from public officials and police officers, according to media reports.
Transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets shared the details of some donors who attempted to conceal their identities using an anonymous feature on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding website, following a data breach, The Guardian reported.
Some donors were associated with email addresses traced to police and public work emails, it said.
Rittenhouse, 18, pleaded not guilty earlier this year to several homicide charges in connection with the killing of Anthony Huber, 26, and Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and the shooting of 22-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz during unrest in Kenosha, Wis. The killings occurred days after the Aug. 23 police shooting of jacob-blake” target=”_blank”>Jacob Blake<
An attorney for Rittenhouse did not immediately return messages from Fox News.
Another donation came from an email address associated with Keith Silvers, an employee of the city of Huntsville, Ala., and Michael Crosley, an engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is charged with maintaining the US’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
A spokesperson for the Livermore lab told The Guardian that Crosley made “an honest mistake” and never intended to use his work email.
Another fundraiser on the site was listed to support Sheskey, which reportedly received donations from several Wisconsin police officers. More than $5,000 in donations came from Kenosha police officers under badge numbers instead of names, the paper reported. Officers in Houston also gave money, the paper said.
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Green Bay Police Chief Andrew Smith told the newspaper in an email that his department “does not take a position on other agencies use of force” but was looking into the matter.
Rittenhouse remains out on bail. He is expected to go to trial in November.
