Another unarmed black man shot but thankfully not killed by police this week in Miami, Florida. The victim, Charles Kinsey, a therapist, was trying to calm his autistic patient down on the streets when he was approached by police following reports of a man threatening to commit suicide (referring to the autistic man) Charles was shot despite laying on the ground and raising his hands up.
North Miami Assistant Police Chief Neal Cuevas told The Miami Herald that officers responded to the scene on Monday to find 47-year-old Charles Kinsey, a therapist who works with people with disabilities, trying to get his 27-year-old patient back to a facility from where he wandered.
According to the Police chief, police ordered Kinsey and the patient, who was sitting in the street playing with a toy truck, to lie on the ground. Kinsey lies down and puts his hands up while trying to get his patient to comply. An officer then fired three times, striking Kinsey in the leg. No weapon was found on Kinsey. According to the police they thought the toy truck was a gun.
Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon, showed a video to Miami Herald on Wednesday taken moments before the shooting. The video shows Kinsey lying in the middle of the street with his hands up, asking the officers not to shoot him, while the autistic man sits next to him, yelling at him to “shut up.”
“Sir, there’s no need for firearms,” Kinsey said he told police before he was shot, according to the station. “It was so surprising. It was like a mosquito bite.”
In hospital as he recovered from the gunshot wound, Charles said he tried to talk to the officers in the video but was unable to get through to them.
“When I went to the ground, I went to the ground with my hands up,” Kinsey said, “and I am laying there just like this. Telling them again there is no need for firearms. He is autistic. He has a toy truck in his hand.”
Police ended up shooting Charles and he just doesn’t know why. The case is under investigation..