The Slatest

Black Man Shot by Police While Lying on the Ground With His Hands Up

What to even say about this video? The man shown in the video, Charles Kinsey, is a caregiver at a Miami-area mental health center. On Wednesday, Kinsey was tending to a 23-year-old autistic man who had wandered from the center and into the street, when police arrived. Some of the details are still a bit unclear, but what is clear is that Kinsey got on the ground with his hands raised when police pulled weapons, and it apparently didn’t make any difference—he was shot once in the leg by the North Miami officers.

In the cellphone recording that shows before shots were fired, Kinsey can be heard trying to reassure the officers that the toy truck the autistic man was carrying was not a weapon. Police said they were called to the scene with a report of a man with a gun threatening to commit suicide. Kinsey says he repeatedly told the officers that he was unarmed while lying on the ground in the middle of the street with his hands up.

Here’s how Kinsey described the incident afterward to WSVN:

“When I went to the ground, I went to the ground with my hands up,” Kinsey said, “and I am laying there just like this. Telling them again there is no need for firearms. He is autistic. He has a toy truck in his hand.” …

“I’m like this right here, and when he shot me, it was so surprising,” Kinsey said. “I thought it was a mosquito bite, and when it hit me I had my hands in the air, and I’m thinking I just got shot! And I’m saying, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me were, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

Kinsey says after he was shot the officers handcuffed him. His injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.