The night of the riots, Rittenhouse drove 20 miles from Antioch, Ill., to Kenosha, armed with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. He was allegedly prompted by a call-to-action via a Facebook group calling itself the Kenosha Guard. Former Kenosha city alderman Kevin Mathewson, who helped organize the action, wrote in the call out for neighbors to “take up arms to defend our City tonight from the evil thugs.”