A Black Lives Matter activist suggested this week that the Waukesha Christmas parade attack Sunday might have been carried out as retaliation for the Kyle Rittenhouse case verdict.
There is no evidence that the attack was connected to the verdict, which found Rittenhouse not guilty of all the felony charges brought against him for the shooting of two rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. But activist Vaun Mayes, who was at the scene of the parade on Monday, said in a livestream video that he believes the two events are connected.
“I don’t know,” Mayes said. “Now we’ll have to wait and see because they do have somebody in custody. We may have to wait and see what they say about why this happened.
“But it sounds possible that the revolution has started in Wisconsin,” he said. “It started with this Christmas parade.”
Black Lives Matter activist Vaun L Mayes @YungLz at the scene of the Waukesha parade attack:
“It sounds like the revolution has started,” mentions hearing from a source who believes Darrell Brooks may have been motivated by the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict.pic.twitter.com/ayp3BjbfZ7— Nobody (@TheNoboddy) November 22, 2021
“I can tell you that the initial person who reached out to me said that they believe that this has to do with the verdict,” he said, “and so I made an assumption of which side it would be from, but I don’t know.”
Police announced on Monday that Darrell Brooks Jr., the man who drove into the Christmas parade crowd, killing eight people and injuring dozens more, did so intentionally. His motivations, however, have not been confirmed.
Brooks was vocal about political issues before the attack, even citing the radical Black Lives Matter movement on social media and pledging his support to a number of other black nationalist and black violent extremist causes.
He has an extensive criminal record, and was released by George Soros-backed Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm earlier this week on $1,000 bail.