Mitchell Lovelace a Missouri man sought to kill school students ‘in name of Kyle Rittenhouse

By Edward Era Barbacena

A deranged white man from Missouri threatened to kill students at a high school “in the name of Kyle Rittenhouse,” police said.

Mitchell Lovelace, 27, posted on Snapchat Saturday that he planned to shoot up Festus High School in honor of the Illinois teen, according to charging documents cited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Rittenhouse, 18, was acquitted of all charges last month in the shootings that killed two men and wounded a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020.

Lovelace, who was later arrested at his Festus home, has been charged with making a terrorist threat, according to Jefferson County prosecutors.

“I’m going to shoot Festus High School students in the name of Kyle Rittenhouse,” Lovelace’s post read, KMOV reported.

Another post by Lovelace warned that “no wonder schools get shot, the news just proved we can get away with it especially if it’s a [expletive] like Festus,” charging documents read.

Prosecutors said Lovelace had previously penned social media posts threatening violence against police and killing a former president, as well as his parents and taking his own life, the Post-Dispatch reported.

An attorney for Lovelace, who is being held without bond at the Jefferson County Jail, did not return a request for comment late Tuesday, according to the newspaper.

Festus R-6 school district officials were notified of Lovelace’s threat, leading them to put school resource officers on heightened patrol following the alleged threat of gun violence, KSDK reported.

A Facebook profile for a Mitchell Lovelace from Festus indicates he attended Festus High School. The rest of the profile, meanwhile, was largely scrubbed, with no posts available as of early Wednesday.