The chief said the shootings wouldn’t have happened had protesters not been out past curfew.

After Jacob Blake was shot 7 times in the back by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, large-scale protests erupted both in the city and around the country, continuing the string of police brutality and racism protests that have been held over the last several months. However, the protest in Kenosha came to a dangerous head when, on Tuesday night, a then-unidentified armed man opened fire on the crowd with an AR-15 rifle, killing two and seriously injuring another.

The gunman has since been identified as Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Antioch, Illinois. A warrant was issued for Rittenhouse, who was then arrested for homicide in the first degree. After Rittenhouse’s arrest, Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis held a news conference where he stressed that a curfew was in effect.

“Everybody involved was out after the curfew,” Miskinis said. “I’m not gonna make a great deal of it but the point is — the curfew’s in place to protect. Had persons not been out involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened.”

An 8 PM curfew had been imposed in Kenosha as of August 25.

Miskinis also made comments to distance the Kenosha Police from Rittenhouse’s actions. “This is not a police action,” he said. “This is not the action, I believe, of those who set out to do protests. It is the persons who were involved after the legal time, involved in illegal activity, that brought violence to this community.”

Right-leaning commentators, most notably Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have spoken out in support of Rittenhouse’s actions. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Carlson said.

This comment drew intense criticism from many sources condemning Carlson for attempting to excuse and justify murder. “Vigilante violence was always one of my greatest worries about the present moment,” Politico editorial director Blake Hounshell wrote in a tweet. “And here we have a prominent TV host – a man who had the president’s ear – excusing it, rationalizing it.”