Charles Kinsey shot by police while helping autistic man, report says

North Miami, Florida, police officers shot an unarmed black man as he reportedly held his hands up in the air while lying on the ground. Kinsey was helping his patient, a 23-year-old man with autism, when the cops were responding to reports of a suicidal man with a gun in the area. This is what I’m thinking.

The shooting comes amid weeks of violence involving police.

Before those shootings, a black man, Alton Sterling, 37, was fatally shot during a scuffle with two white officers at a convenience store.

It was followed days later by the death of Philando Castile, who was legally registered to carry a gun and told an officer that he had a weapon during a July 6 traffic stop in a St. Paul suburb.

Videos in the past year of such shootings or their aftermath in cities including North Charleston, South Carolina; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota have spurred protests over use of force against minorities by police.

Police Chief Gary Eugene told reporters on Thursday he had asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to lead the investigation.

“Bringing in an outside agency assures our commitment to transparency and objectivity in a very sensitive matter”, he said.

“I realize there may be questions about what happened on Monday night. North Miami is a city where the police officers and the community gel”, she said.

“You know what I don’t have an answer”, she said.

According to North Miami Assistant Police Chief Neal Cuevas, the officers were responding to a 911 call regarding a man holding a gun and threatening to kill himself. The therapist, Charles Kinsey, was trying to help his autistic patient who had run away from a group home.

The cellphone video shows Kinsey lying on the ground, with his arms up, shouting to police, “All he has is a toy truck in his hand”.

Minutes later, Kinsey said, one of the officers shot him in the leg. The autistic man was beside him, sitting cross-legged and upright with the toy truck in his hand. “He is autistic. He has a toy truck in his hand”, Kinsey told WVSN.

Kinsey was shot three times and subsequently hospitalized.

The video does not show the moment of the shooting, and Napoleon said there was about a two-minute gap in which the person who shot the video had switched off, thinking nothing more noteworthy would happen.

“I am a behavior therapist”, Kinsey says in the video. I’m unarmed, this is an autistic guy.

“Please be still. get down. lay on your stomach”, Kinsey says in the video.

“When he shot me, it was so surprising”.

Kinsey said he was stunned by the shooting, like when a mosquito bites unexpectedly.

After the shooting, Mr Kinsey said he asked an officer why he was shot and he said “I don’t know”.

The officer has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard. Being rational. And he was still shot, said Wilson. The case is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, he said.

Napoleon said Thursday Kinsey is physically “doing OK”.

“We obviously want to gather as much information as we can so that we can make informed decisions”, Lynch said.

Cell phone video released by Kinsey’s attorney shows part of that exchange.

“The video is like a nightmare”, she said, after rushing over to the press conference to speak to reporters.