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A Black bicyclist charged with killing a white Milwaukee lawyer last year says he acted in self defense, and plans to rely on the same expert who testified for Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of killing two people during protests in Kenosha.
The cases differ in many other ways, but activists see Milwaukee’s as a test of whether a Black man can rely on self-defense the same way a white vigilante teen backed by conservative and gun rights advocates could.
Theodore Edgecomb, 31, faces a count of first-degree reckless homicide in the Sept. 22, 2020 shooting of Jason Cleereman, 54, an immigration attorney and advocate. Edgecomb left the area, and prosecutors called the shooting a case of road rage, as friends and supporters mourned Cleereman.
Surveillance video from the area shows Cleereman could be viewed as the aggressor before he was shot. Edgecomb’s lawyers call the original road rage narrative “distorted and inaccurate.”
They claim Cleereman was drunk, uttered racial slurs twice against Edgecomb, threatened to kill him and had a folding knife in his pocket. Read more.
