Kyle Rittenhouse's mother insists her teen son who fatally shot 2 people at a protest 'didn't go down there to hurt anybody'

• The mother of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of killing two people and wounding another in August at Jacob Blake protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, said her son "didn't go down there to hurt anybody."
• The 17-year-old is facing charges including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide.
• "If he did not have that gun, he would have been dead," Wendy Rittenhouse told WISN-TV on Sunday. "When I heard the charges, I was like, how? You look at the videos, it's all self-defense."
• She said that she wished her son had stayed home that night and that he "was there to help people."

Kyle Rittenhouse's mother said her son, who's accused of shooting and killing people at protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August, "didn't go down there to hurt anybody."

In an interview with WISN-TV's Hillary Mintz published Sunday, Wendy Rittenhouse said that her son "was there to help people" but that she wished he had stayed home.

"No one should have never went down to Kenosha," she said. "I mean, people were rioting, looting, burning down the city."

On August 25, protests erupted in Kenosha following the shooting of Jacob Blake by local law enforcement. That day, Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch, Illinois, traveled across state lines with an AR-15-style rifle purchased by a friend. He's accused of killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz. Footage of Rittenhouse shooting at people circulated online.

He was taken into police custody one day later. He posted a $2 million bail in late November with the help of the actor Ricky Schroder and Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and an ally of President Donald Trump.

The teen faces charges including first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless homicide.

"If he did not have that gun, he would have been dead," Wendy Rittenhouse told WISN-TV. "When I heard the charges, I was like, how? You look at the videos, it's all self-defense."

Wendy Rittenhouse has previously talked about her son's intentions in attending the protests. She told the Chicago Tribune in November that her son was helping local businesses, as Insider's Yelena Dzhanova reported.

"The police should have helped the businesses out instead," Wendy Rittenhouse told the Tribune.

She added: "The police should have been involved with these people that lost their businesses. They should have stepped up. I'm not mad at the police. I'm not. They have a hard enough job as it is."