On Thursday, Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is overseeing Kyle Rittenhouse’s homicide trial, banned MSNBC from the courtroom, a day after police said they arrested an employee for the network man who allegedly followed the jurors on a bus in an attempt to photograph them on Wednesday evening.
Schroeder said a man was driving about a block behind the jury bus on Wednesday evening and went through a red light. The man was pulled over by police and told them he worked for NBC News and had been instructed by his boss to follow the jury bus, the judge said.
In response, Schroeder said no one from MSNBC would be permitted into the building for the remainder of the trial, CNN reported Thursday.
“This is a very serious matter and I don’t know what the ultimate truth of it is, but absolutely it would go without much thinking that someone who is following the jury bus — that is a very, it’s an extremely serious matter and it will be referred to the proper authorities for further action,” Schroeder said, according to CNN.
NBC News responded to Schroeder’s decision by acknowledging that a freelancer “received a traffic violation near the jury bus” but denied he intended to contact or photograph the jurors,” according to The Independent.
Despite the incident, the jury in Rittenhouse’s homicide trial began their third day of deliberations for five felony charges related to the fatal shooting of two people and the wounding of another during last year’s unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
