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Witness to police shooting says he tried to warn officers

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Charles Kinsey explains in an interview from his hospital bed in Miami what happened when he was shot by police on Monday.

NORTH MIAMI, Fla. >> A witness to this week’s police shooting of an unarmed black therapist says he tried to warn officers the autistic man sitting with the therapist was holding a toy truck.

Thomas Matthews says he watched the buildup to Monday’s shooting of Charles Kinsey by North Miami police officers through binoculars. He said he tried to tell an officer the object they seemed concerned about as the men sat in an intersection was a toy truck but she told him to get back. The officers fired three times, hitting Kinsey in the leg. He is recovering.

Kinsey said he was trying to coax the autistic man back to a home he had wandered from. Police said they had responded to reports of a man with a gun threatening to kill himself. No weapon was recovered. Authorities are investigating the shooting.

11 responses to “Witness to police shooting says he tried to warn officers”

  1. sailfish1 says:

    If police don’t have good vision, they might try using binoculars too.

    • localguy says:

      Sometimes you just can’t fix stupid. Lolo officer needs to be fired as he clearly is unfit to serve. Fires three shots, one barely hits. So where did the other two shots go?

      Sad to say Miami PD isn’t cutting it when it comes to removing the 1% of rogue officers on their force. Weak link of senior officers are not doing their jobs. Just coasting to retirement.

    • truelies says:

      The guy was black, what you expect.

  2. HanabataDays says:

    “The officers fired three times”

    The original story used the term “officer” and indicated that only one had fired. Were there multiple shooters?

    The reason this matters is because it’s so common for other officers to start firing reflexively once the first shot is fired. Oftentimes (though not in this case) they empty their clips.

    I’m personally familiar with this after seeing HPD riddle a suspect with bullets in front of the Mo’ili’ili Burger King about 25 years ago. He was hit in excess of 20 times and the surrounding buildings and cars were also hit numerous times. It’s a miracle no innocent bystanders were shot in this fusillade of bullets. One doesn’t forget seeing something like that. It left me vividly aware of this reflex-firing phenomenon that happens all too frequently.

  3. bahIggins says:

    The heat is the same wherever you go

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