A South Florida appeals court Wednesday overturned the conviction of a former North Miami Police Department officer who was found guilty of negligence for shooting an autistic man’s caretaker in 2016, court documents show.
Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal overturned a “conviction for misdemeanor culpable negligence” for Jonathan Aledda after determining it was invalid because prosecutors did not allow testimony during a June 2019 trial from the SWAT commander who trained Aledda, the documents show.
In a statement emailed to CNN, Florida State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the decision is “disappointing to all who believed that this shooting incident was unnecessary and incorrect.” The office may ask the appeals court for a re-hearing, the statement continued.
Eric Schwartzreich and Anthony Bruno, attorneys for Aledda, told CNN, “We look forward to the State dropping the charges or in the alternative to Mr. Aledda being found not guilty.”
In July 2016, Aledda was one of 13 officers who responded to a call about a man with a gun, court documents show. When officers arrived, they encountered Arnaldo Rios-Soto, a man with severe developmental disabilities, and his caretaker Charles Kinsey in the middle of an intersection, according to court documents.
Rios-Soto was rocking back and forth and playing with a silver toy truck, court documents said. Kinsey told the first two officers who arrived that Rios-Soto had a toy. Aledda arrived sometime after that, and some officers on scene said it appeared the toy was a gun.
Aledda’s lawyers argued that he thought he was observing a hostage situation. He shot at Rios-Soto three times but missed, hitting Kinsey once, according to court documents. Kinsey was wounded in the hip.
“He took the shots because he believed that a hostage was in danger,” Schwartzreich and Bruno said in a statement.
Aledda is “elated by the appeals court decision” and wants to return to work as a law enforcement officer, Schwartzreich said.
CNN reached out to the North Miami Police Department for comment but did not hear back.
How the shooting unfolded
An affidavit from the July 2016 shooting stated Rios-Soto had ventured into the street outside a home for people with mental disabilities. Kinsey followed him in an attempt to bring him back inside.
Rios-Soto sat down in the street and was playing with a silver toy truck, which a passerby thought may have been a gun and called police, according to the affidavit.
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