The incident was caught on a video in which Kinsey, who received a gunshot wound to the leg, can be heard telling police his patient is holding a toy truck, reports the Washington Post.
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Charles Kinsey – a behavioral therapist – was attempting to assist a 23-year-old autistic man who had wandered away from a group home.
Police ordered Mr Kinsey and the patient to lie on the ground, he told The Miami Herald.
North Miami Police Chief Gary Eugene said on Thursday he had asked Florida state officials to lead the investigation into the shooting. The autistic man beside him, sitting cross-legged and upright with the toy truck in his hand. Kinsey had gone to retrieve the man, who is autistic, when officers arrived. Someone in the neighborhood misinterpreted his behavior, calling 911 while apparently mistaking his toy truck for a gun.
Rivera asked for members of the public to let the investigation run its course before deciding the fate of the officer who fired at Kinsey.
“They flipped me over, and I’m faced down in the ground, with cuffs on, waiting on the rescue squad to come”.
“I think it’s a bogus explanation, I think it’s not acceptable, it’s an excuses and excuses of tools of incompetence”, protester Ade Abisogun said. “I took this job to save lives and help people”, the statement said.
Thomas Matthews says he watched the buildup to the shooting through binoculars. If the patient is the person who officers believed had the gun, why would they shoot the person next to him who is on his back?
Police need to acknowledge this feeling among African-American men and work to find a solution, said Chuck Drago, a white former police chief in Oviedo, Florida. “Wow, was I wrong”, he told a television station.
“North Miami is a city where the police officers and the community gel”, Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson said. Before those shootings, a black man, Alton Sterling, 37, was fatally shot during a scuffle with two white officers at a convenience store. The officers were responding to a call of a man threatening someone with a gun. When he had a “fit of rage” with officers on the sidewalk, they still used the stun weapon on him; she was arrested for resisting arrest. “I did what I had to do in a split second to accomplish that and hate to hear others paint me as something I am not”.
“There are many questions about what happened on Monday night“, he said.
Kinsey told reporters that he was more concerned about his patient’s well being during the incident, because he assumed officers would not shoot him if he had his hands up.
“His words were, ‘I don’t know, ‘ Kinsey said”.
Despite not responding to questions from the media about the incident, he assured journalists: “We will get all the answers”.
An unarmed care worker was shot by police as he tried to calm down an autistic patient.
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“As long as I’ve got my hands up, they’re not gonna shoot me, that’s what I’m thinking”, he said.
