A unarmed black man trying to help a patient
with autism was shot and wounded by Florida police while lying on the ground
with his arms raised in the air and pleading with officers to hold their fire.
Charles Kinsey was
wounded in the leg in the incident Monday in Miami, which came as he was trying
to help a disoriented autistic man who had wandered away from a group home where
Kinsey works as a therapist.
Police said they were
responding to an emergency call about a man with a gun walking around and
threatening suicide.
Cell phone footage
shows Kinsey on the ground with his arms in the air, with the heavy-set young
autistic man sitting on the ground nearby playing with a small white toy.
In the video, Kinsey can be heard shouting to
police: “All he has is a toy truck. A toy truck. I am a behavioral therapist at
a group home.”
He was shot anyway. The
video ends before that.
Kinsey was not
seriously hurt.
The incident
illustrates the edgy mood of US police and the nation in general after the
police ambush in Dallas that left five officers dead and another similar
incident Sunday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that killed three.
Kinsey, 47, told
Florida TV station WSVN-Channel 7 that as he lay on the ground he told police
that he was unarmed.
“I am asking the
officer, I said, ‘sir, please don’t shoot me. Please, do not shoot me.'”
Kinsey added, “It was
like a mosquito bite, and when it hit me, 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.'”
The officer who opened fire
has been placed on administrative leave for at least a week, the Miami Herald
reported.
The investigation has
been turned over to the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, it added.
-AFP
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