A North Miami police commander who radioed that a man was loading his weapon just before healthcare professional Charles Kinsey was shot was suspended without pay Friday for misleading investigators at the police department.
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SWAT team commander Emile Hollant has been placed on leave without pay after making conflicting statements about the incident, Spring said.
Aledda is on administrative leave while the authorities review what happened.
Kinsey, a 47-year-old married father of five who has worked at the MacTown Center for the Developmentally Disabled for more than a year, was shot Monday afternoon while trying to coax an autistic man he cared for back into the center.
Mayor Smith Joseph apologized to the wounded man and promised a complete investigation of the shooting.
Spring said that Cmdr.
“It appeared to the officers that the white male was trying to do harm to Mr. Kinsey”, says John Rivera, president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association.
A union official has said the officer was aiming for the autistic man because he thought he was a threat, but the officer missed and hit Kinsey.
“The PBA is now trying to say they meant to shoot my client, and they accidentally shot my employee. To me, that’s outrageous”.
At a press conference Thursday, a spokesperson for the Miami officer involved in the shooting offered an explanation. He can be heard telling police, “I’m a behavioral therapist at a group home”.
The officer believed he was saving Kinsey’s life, but he accidentally shot him in the leg.
When officers ordered the men to lie down with their hands up, Kinsey complied, but the autistic man did not.
Kinsey told WSVN that his patient was holding a toy truck, not a gun.
The video doesn’t show what happened when the officer opened fire. Kinsey lay on the ground, explaining the situation to officers at a distance. Both men were seen flat on the ground, with two officers standing near them. Kinsey is lying in the road, on his stomach and handcuffed.
Napoleon said Thursday that Kinsey was physically “doing OK”.
Mr Eugene said officers were responding to a 911 call of a person who was suicidal and that no gun was recovered at the scene. Only much later, when we’re able to ‘Monday-morning quarterback, ‘ do we find out that it’s a toy. A shop owner said Aledda shoved him against the wall and arrested him after other officers wrongly identified him as a robbery suspect.
Rivera said that the video footage of the shooting was “being portrayed poorly”.
“This is not one of those cases where it’s a rogue cop”. This is not the case of a police abuse.
Taken by someone who lives in an apartment complex adjacent to where Kinsey was shot, Napoleon said he received it in two parts. Though it doesn’t show the shooting, Napoleon said he doesn’t believe it was edited before he received it. He is still concerned, if you listen to the video, about his client. One struck Kinsey in the leg.
“Fearing for Mr. Kinsey’s life, [Aledda] discharged his firearm”, Rivera said during a news conference Thursday.
Aledda issued a statement in the form of a text message, which Rivera read to reporters. He said he tells them to stay calm and slow down their actions, realizing it takes people with autism longer to process information. “I did what I had to do in a split second to accomplish that and hate to hear others paint me as something that I’m not”.
‘Why did you shoot me?’
“This is like a nightmare to me”, Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson said. “He is a little shaken over the fact that-his question to me was ‘Uncle Danny what else could I have done to keep from getting shot?’ And I said ‘Charles you couldn’t have done nothing else'”.
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North Miami officials vowed on Friday that the investigation of the latest incident would be thorough.
