SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — On Friday, 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges after pleading self-defense in the deadly Kenosha shootings.
The two people killed were identified as 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and 26-year-old Anthony Huber.
It's a verdict that has folks across the Sacramento community calling Friday a dark day for justice.
"It's just not fair, it's not fair," Deja Owens, a barber in Oak Park said.
As a cloud of darkness hovers over a crisp Oak Park, Owens can't seem to get one thing out of her mind.
"It's just like that one statement of not found guilty," she said.
She found out Rittenhouse was found not guilty while working at an Oak Park barbershop.
"As a black woman, it hurts me to the core because it's almost like well, do we matter?" she said.
Owens went on to say, if it was someone on the stand who shared her skin color, this would be a much different story.
"Since we've been treated so poorly and then we see situations like this, with Rittenhouse and he's just getting written off like nothing has happened like he didn't do anything, that's when it becomes something like as if we don't matter," she said. "We do matter."
Sam Starks, executive director of MLK 365, has put together MLK marches in Sacramento in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. for the last two decades.
"These are dark days for justice and this is not a good thing for America," Starks said. "This is not law and order, this is vigilantism at it's finest."
He worries this verdict could open the door to anyone else that wants to stop a protest.
"This could very easily open the door for anybody else that wants to stop protests, that wants to as a kind of reaction to protests, send messages to other fellow Americans to go carry your AR-13's, carry your high-powered assault weapons to these protest rallies and if they look at you wrong, shoot them, and we got you," he said. "The courts will cover you and that's the fear."
Calling it a failure of the justice system, Starks said, this verdict is a perfect example of why his marches need to continue to happen.
"We have to continue to remind people through peaceful protests and marches that the march isn't done until the victory's won," he said. "But until we get it right, we are at best, a Nation that's in the making and it is a reality."
Craig DeLuz, communications director for the California Republican Assembly, spoke to ABC10 Friday hours after the verdict was announced.
"I believe justice was done in this particular case," Deluz said. "And I just think it's important that we never ever, ever get to the point, continue getting to the point where we're trying to find someone guilty of something, simply because we want to prove a greater sociological point.”
He went out to say when asked his opinion on what people should take away from this case as an outcome — with race and political opinions put to the side.
"The first thing that we ought to take away from this case is the presumption of innocence, which is so vitally important," he said. "What we should do is, before we convict someone in the court of public opinion, we ought to let the information and the facts come out.”
