Kyle Rittenhouse 'wishes he didn't have to' shoot three people during riots in Kenosha, Washington, his lawyer has said.
The teenager was charged with killing two men and wounding a third with an assault-style rifle in August last year, but was found not guilty on all counts yesterday (19 November), following a trial that lasted almost three weeks.
Speaking to CNN, Rittenhouse's lawyer Mark Richards said the 18-year-old 'didn't want' to kill anyone, and doesn't legally believe he did anything wrong.
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CNN's Chris Cuomo asked: "Does he wish he hadn't gone that night? Does he think he did anything wrong?"
Richards replied: "100 times over. You know, Kyle said: 'If I had to do it all over again and had any idea something like this would happen. I wouldn't do it.'"
He added: "I want to be clear that is not regret for what he did that night under those circumstances.
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"Hindsight is always 20/20, if not better, and he didn't want to kill anybody and he was left with a terrible choice and he exercised that choice, which was found to be lawful."
Richard then asked again: "Does he think he did anything wrong?"
After a long pause, Richards said: "Legally, no."
When Cuomo asked if Rittenhouse felt he did anything wrong 'morally', Richards continued: "He wishes he didn't have to do it.
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"This case has been so political, so yes or no the narrative that came out was not the truth.
"At trial, it did come out, he'd lived in that community, he'd worked in that community, his family - his dad, his grandmother, aunts, uncles - lived in that community. He spent a lot of time there. He went down there earlier in the day to help clean up graffiti, do those things, and when he was asked to help, he went."
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the incident, had travelled to Kenosha from his home in Illinois after protests broke out over the shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer.
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He had an AR-style semi-automatic rifle with him - which, according to his lawyers, he feared would be taken away and used against him.
Rittenhouse then shot and killed two people - Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber - before proceeding to wound Gaige Grosskreutz, a protester and volunteer medic.
In his interview with CNN, Richards was also asked if he thought current law made it 'too easy to kill in self-defence'.
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Richards said: "To me - and I know people will go nuts when I say this - but there's too many guns in our society. And that might seem like a hollow statement coming from me.
"I do own firearms. I don't conceal carry. I don't want to carry a firearm. I think too many people run around with guns in our society.
"And I represent a lot of people who have legal conceal carry permits who get into it, they pull the gun and there's problems from there, whether they're under the influence of alcohol or they use it to threaten somebody.
"I wish our society wasn't perceived as being so dangerous that people needed to arm themselves.
"I'm old enough when I remember you couldn't carry a gun."
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Topics: News, US News, No-Article-Matching, Kyle Rittenhouse