Two people were killed and another was wounded as shots were fired late Tuesday in Kenosha during the third night of unrest in Wisconsin following the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, authorities said.
The shootings were reported at about 11:45 pm in an area where protests have taken place, Kenosha police Lt. Joseph Nosalik said in a news release.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said one victim was shot in the head and another was shot in the chest, the Milwaukee Journal Sentine l reported. Beth didn't know where the other person was shot, but his or her injuries were not believed to be life threatening.
Beth told the Journal Sentinel that armed people had been patrolling the city's streets in recent nights, but he did not know if the shooter was among them.
"They're a militia," Beth said. "They're like a vigilante group." Cellphone video of at least two of the shootings that was posted online shows what appears to be a white man with a semi-automatic rifle jogging down the middle of a street as a crowd and some police officers follow him. Someone in the crowd can be heard asking "What did he do?" and another responds that the man had shot someone.
The man with the gun stumbles and falls, and as he's approached by people in the crowd, he fires three or four shots from the seated position, hitting at least two people, including one who falls over and another who stumbles away to frantic shouts of "Medic! Medic!" With the crowd scattering, the shooter stands up and continues walking down the street as police cars arrive.
The man puts up his hands and walks toward the squad cars, with someone in the crowd yelling at police that the man just shot someone, but several of the cars drive past him toward the people who had been shot. Beth told the Journal Sentinel that no one had been detained over the shootings, but that he thought at least one person would be soon based on video police had reviewed.
