On the citizen video that caught the encounter, Kinsey can be explaining who both of them were, and telling police that the patient was not armed, and that all he had was a toy truck.
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Police said they were called to the scene with a report of a man with a gun threatening to commit suicide.
‘Sir, there’s no need for firearms, ‘ Kinsey said he told police before he was shot.
“He asked the officer, ‘Why did you shoot me?’ The officer said ‘i don’t know, ‘” Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon II, said.
North Miami Police have not released the officer’s name, but an investigation into the incident continues.
After being shot, Kinsey said, “They flipped me over, and I’m face down on the ground, with cuffs on, waiting on the rescue squad to come. I assure you, we’ll get all the answers”, the police chief told reporters Thursday.
“He’s traumatized by that”, Clinton Bower, who runs the group home Kinsey works for, said referring to the autistic man.
He told journalists: “When I went to the ground, I went to the ground with my hands up”.
Mobile phone footage shows Mr Kinsey on the ground with his arms in the air, with the young autistic man sitting on the ground nearby playing with a small white toy.
“The shooting officer said he didn’t know why he shot him”, Napoleon said, according to NBC Miami. Two weeks earlier, two white officers in Baton Rouge killed a black man, Alton Sterling, 37, on July 5 during a scuffle at a convenience store. The actual shooting was not captured in two videos of the incident circulating online.
She said there have been a few complaints about illegal traffic stops. Kinsey and his attorney have made comments that indicate their plans to pursue litigation against the Miami Police. Kinsey says he tried to convince the officers neither himself nor his patient was a threat.
“He has a toy truck”, Kinsey, a black man, tells the officers.
“When he shot me, it was so surprising”.
The video spread wildly online Wednesday night and Thursday, and state officials said they had launched an investigation.
The shooting comes amid heightened tension in the US after gunmen killed eight law enforcement officers in the southern cities of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas.
Nancy Abudu, the American Civil Liberties Union’s legal director in Florida, said her group hasn’t received any brutality complaints about the North Miami police or about any questionable shootings before this week’s. “Wow, was I wrong”, he said. Police say he is a 30-year-old Hispanic male who has been with the department for four years.
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Thomas Matthews says he watched the buildup to the shooting through binoculars. “I was really more anxious about him than myself”.
