Avowed ‘boogaloo boi’ says he roamed Kenosha streets with Kyle Rittenhouse before shootings

An adherent to the far-right boogaloo movement — whose most extreme followers are reportedly looking to spark a civil war — was with Kyle Rittenhouse last week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, before the Antioch teenager allegedly opened fire on protesters, killing two and wounding another.

Ryan Balch, an Army veteran from West Bend, Wisconsin, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he met Rittenhouse in the lead up to last Tuesday’s shootings and spent much of the day with him. While Balch said Rittenhouse “had no connection” to the loosely organized group, he noted that as many as 32 boogaloo adherents were in Kenosha that day.

Balch, who has used social media to post Nazi propaganda and white nationalist messaging, described himself in a series of Facebook messages to the Sun-Times as a “Boog Boi.” According to the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacists, militia members and other extremists use the phrase boogaloo as “shorthand for a future civil war.”