The police officer who shot a care worker in the leg as he lay on the ground has reportedly admitted he doesn’t know why he fired his weapon.
Charles Kinsey, North Miami, Florida, had been trying to calm down a severely autistic patient when officers fired their weapons hitting him in the leg.
Now Miami police department have admitted they don’t know who the officer was aiming for when he opened fire and have been unable to offer an explanation for the attack, The Mirror report.
The incident came to light in startling footage released yesterday and shows Kinsey, a behavioural therapist, complying with armed police demands that he lie down in the road and put his hands in the air.
Despite doing everything the officers said they shot and hit Kinsey in the leg.
Speaking from his hospital bed Kinsey claimed he asked the officer, who remains anonymous, after the shooting why he’d done it and was told ‘I don’t know’.
A member of the public had called the police after allegedly seeing a man walking around with a gun and threatening suicide.
Kinsey who’d been searching for an autistic patient who’d wandered away from his care group found the 23-year-old playing in the road with a toy car.
It appears that police may have confused the car for a weapon, despite it being clearly visible, and demanded that Kinsey and the patient do what they say.
In the video, the care worker can be heard trying explain that it’s just a toy car and begging his patient to lay down.
He said:
I was really more worried about him than myself. I was thinking, ‘as long as I have my hands up…they’re not going to shoot me’. Wow, was I wrong.
I said [to the officer], ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ And his words to me, he said, ‘I don’t know’.
North Miami Police and the Florida State Attorney are now investigating the case.
Mr Kinsey’s lawyer, Hilton Napoleon has said:
There’s no justification for shooting an unarmed person who’s talking to you and telling you that they don’t have a gun, and that they’re a mental health counsellor.
The shooting is one of a number of horrific gun attacks that have taken place in the U.S. in the last few weeks.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.