–UPDATE as of 6/2020–
It’s been nearly four years since behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey was shot in the leg in the middle of a roadway by North-Miami cop, Jonathan Aledda as the healthcare worker lay on his back wearing a bright yellow shirt with his arms raised in the air. This iconic picture was freeze-framed from a cellphone video taken by someone in an apartment who was watching the scene. Next to him, sitting cross-legged and fiddling with his silver toy truck, was Kinsey patient, a severely autistic Arnaldo Rios Soto.
“I was just doing my job when I was shot by a police officer. I was laying in the ground with my hands in the air and I was actually trying to help police defuse the situation. Even then, they still handcuffed me after they shot me. They treated me like I was a criminal,” Kinsey said.
Three years after the incident, a jury found Aledda guilty of culpable negligence in the shooting of the unarmed black therapist. But according to The Miami Herald, Kinsey said the past three years had been difficult as he dealt with depositions, court proceedings and doctor appointments.
Kinsey, who now works with adolescents at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center called Safe Landing, said despite everything that has went on, there is been one big bright spot in his life: the birth 10 months ago of his child, Charles.
“He makes my day,” he said.
—Original Article Below—
“All he has is a toy truck,” a man in the video shouts. “I am a behavior therapist at a group home.”
Those were the words of Charles Kinsey, 47, a behavior therapist who works day in and day out helping the disabled, right before he was shot in the leg trying to calm down one of his patients who had run away from the group home where he works.
The video, reportedly taken with a cellphone, was filmed Monday and published online Wednesday. Charles gave an interview to local Miami CNN news affiliate from his hospital bed in which he described telling officers — who were responding to a call of an armed man threatening suicide — that he was attempting to bring a man with autism back to the assisted living facility from which he had wandered.
In a statement, North Miami police say officers who responded to the scene “attempted to negotiate with two men on the scene,” and that one of the officers discharged his weapon. The department says the officer is now on administrative leave and that it’s investigating the case with the help of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office.
MUST SEE: Are These Signs Of Autism Or Something Else?
When dealing with someone who has autism or someone who is having an autistic meltdown like Kinsey was trying to do, there are a few steps a therapist must do to diffuse the situation.The basic thing is to hold them and calm them and wait until they can calm down themselves. But Kinsey was unable to since he was lying on the ground, so he was trying to calm the autistic adult with his words and keep him out of harms way.
During the incident, the patient had a toy truck; Kinsey says he had been worried for the patient’s safety and was surprised that he himself was shot — he tells that he had his hands up as high as he could get them, and had obeyed an order to lie on the ground. In a segment of the encounter with police that apparently wasn’t captured on video, Kinsey was shot in the leg.
Cell phone video released by Kinsey’s attorney shows part of that exchange.
“Please be still … get down … lay on your stomach,” Kinsey says in the video.
“I’m like this right here, and when he shot me, it was so surprising,” Kinsey says in his interview showing his arms are up. “I’m like, I’m more worried about my patient, worried about his safety, because I’m thinking my hands are up. But when I felt it, it was like a mosquito bite, and I’m like, I still got my hands in the air, and I said, ‘No, I just got shot!’ And I’m saying, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me, he said, ‘I don’t know.'”
I don’t know. I don’t know? That’s all he had to say for himself?!
“I’m just so grateful he’s alive and so grateful to tell his story,” said Kinsey’s wife, Joyce.
For more on police shootings and what you can do, click here.
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