her name is susan hughes, and she joins us now. susan, i'm very sorry for your loss, and i appreciate you taking this opportunity. >> thank you. >> my condolences to the family. what did the verdict mean to you? >> well, you know, i would like to say it's closure. it's not really. but it's another milestone in the path to eventually being able to deal with anthony's death and for that matter for carrie ann to deal with joseph and gage to get on with his life. i'm not naive. i think we will continue to be contacted by media every time some circumstance comes up regarding this. but we haven't had -- it's been 15 months of solid -- every day i've seen that video, not intentionally. but i open my phone. you know, it's -- it's running on some crawl on a news feed or whatever. we need to get past that. change your news cycle. you know, we need to get on with the grieving process. >> i hope you do. i hope you guys can make space for that. what are you going to tell yourself about why this happened? >> about what part of it? i mean about a

we want to bring in his great aunt, susan hughes. good morning to you, we want to extend our condolences to you this morning. you have had some hours to process the verdict. what message do you think the jury is sending with this verdict? >> you know, i think they made their best efforts. i think the fact that it took four days, perhaps gives us some encouragement that at least it was a difficult decision to reach. one irony of this whole thing is that the verdict came down on anthony's mother's birthday. that's a particularly hard blow. >> susan, the defense said that rittenhouse had a right to self-defense. you said that your nephew had a right to his own life, that he was intervening to protect other lives, an argument that the jury rejected. how do you want americans to remember your nephew this morning? >> well, i think, you know, they rejected it because they stopped every attempt to say anything positive at all about any of the victims. none of them deserve the kind of treatment they received, the wild web. and frankly from so