North Miami Police Officer Convicted Of Culpable Negligence

MIAMI, FL — A North Miami Police Officer was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge late Monday but was found not guilty of more serious felony charges during a retrial in connection with the July 2016 shooting of behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey.

"In Count 1, not guilty; Count 2, not guilty; Count 3, guilty of culpable negligence," said the jury foreman.

Jonathan Aledda was found guilty of misdemeanor culpable negligence by the Miami-Dade County jury but was not convicted of attempted manslaughter charges.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said she was grateful to each of the jurors for their "thoughtful evaluation of all the evidence." She said the community has been "traumatized" since the shooting.

"This was a difficult case for all involved and for our community," Fernandez Rundle acknowledged in a statement.

"The jury spent a lot of time on this case," Chief Assistant Don Horn of the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office told reporters. "We think that the verdict they returned is fair."

But defense attorney Douglas Hartman was disappointed.

"We thought he should have never been charged to begin with and we're disappointed that he was convicted or they found him guilty of a misdemeanor," said Hartman.

Aledda and other North Miami officers were dispatched when a patient requiring 24-hour, one-on-one supervision left the Miami Achievement Center for the Developmentally Disabled with a silver toy tanker truck in hand.

Kinsey, the patient's behavioral therapist, was attempting to get the patient back into the facility when he was shot by mistake. The initial 9-1-1 report described the patient as possibly suicidal with a silver weapon in his hand.

Aledda insisted that he fired three shots from his Colt M4 Carbine rifle because he mistook the shiny toy truck for a handgun.

Prosecutors maintained that two other North Miami police officers were only 20 feet away while Aledda was too far to open fire at 152 feet away.

They argued that Officer Aledda was not in a position to correctly assess the situation or in a position to accurately fire.

The officer was arrested following a joint investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office.