The North Miami police officer who shot an unarmed caregiver of an autistic man in 2016 has been found not guilty of one count of culpable negligence Friday, while the jury came back undecided on three other charges.
Officer Jonathan Aledda was seen on a cellphone video shooting Charles Kinsey, a behavior therapist, even after Kinsey told police that he was unarmed and that the man sitting on the ground beside him was autistic. Kinsey was shot in the leg but survived.
Aledda was on trial for two felony counts of attempted manslaughter and two misdemeanor charges of culpable negligence for the July 2016 shooting.
The judge said a hearing will be held March 27 to determine how they'll proceed on the three remaining charges, according to NBC Miami.
Police were alerted to the scene in 2016 after a report of a man walking around with a gun and threatening suicide.
Kinsey told police that he was unarmed and that the man sitting beside him was autistic and holding a toy truck — not a gun as a 911 caller had claimed.
Video of the incident went viral after many saw it as an apparent example of excessive policing against an unarmed black man.
Aledda said in a statement through his union after the incident went viral that, "I did what I had to do in a split second to accomplish that and hate to hear others paint me as something I’m not."
Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County, said in a statement Friday that her team would discuss "the appropriate course of action as to the unresolved counts."
"The difficulties posed by this case are clearly represented by the jury’s inability to come to a verdict on three of the four charged offenses," the statement said.
