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Mom of autistic man at center of Charles Kinsey shooting: My son is traumatized

 
Amaldo Eliud Rios Soto displays a toy train. He was holding a toy truck and sitting in a roadway when his caregiver Charles Kinsey was shot by a North Miami police officer on July 18. [Courtesy of Gladys Soto via Miami Herald]
Amaldo Eliud Rios Soto displays a toy train. He was holding a toy truck and sitting in a roadway when his caregiver Charles Kinsey was shot by a North Miami police officer on July 18. [Courtesy of Gladys Soto via Miami Herald]
Published July 23, 2016

MIAMI — Gladys Soto learned that her adult son was at the center of a brewing national scandal over the excessive use of police force and the rights of disabled people when a church friend called her Monday. Was she watching television? Was that Arnoldo, her son with autism, clutching a toy truck next to a caregiver who had just been shot?

It would be hours before 60-year-old Gladys Soto learned the truth: Her son, Arnoldo Eliud Rios Soto had wandered away from his North Miami group home. His behavior therapist, a man Rios loved, had been shot by police as he desperately tried to warn them that Rios had autism, was not a danger to anyone, and was wielding a toy truck, not a gun. As Charles Kinsey lay on the ground, hands raised above him in a sign of abject submission, a bullet from a police sniper pierced his leg.

The head of Miami-Dade's police union later insisted the bullet had been meant for Rios.

"I feel like my wings have been cut off, and it's the end of everything," Soto told the Miami Herald Saturday morning. "It's too emotional to see your baby caught up in something like this."

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: North Miami police shoot black man with his hands up as he tries to help autistic patient

It was more than her son could endure, as well. On Tuesday, Rios wandered yet again. He returned to the blood-stained sidewalk where his caregiver had been shot the day before and threw himself to the ground, his mother says. Rocking rhythmically, he shouted: "I hate the police. I hate the police."

Rios has been in the psychiatric wing of Aventura Hospital since then, said Soto, who visited her son Friday night. For days, Rios had remained hospitalized in the same dirty clothes and blood-stained jacket he was wearing when his image was seared into the national debate about race and policing and the senseless shooting of unarmed men.

Soto only wanted to protect her son — not become a national symbol. "It is me against an entire system," she said. "I feel alone and weak, like a little soldier fighting against an entire army."

Rios, 26, was diagnosed with a complex and disabling form of autism as a small child. He is largely non-verbal, though he can use a handful of words. He's big and tall, and all that bigness can be a danger when Rios loses his temper.

"We don't have enough high-quality, well-supported, evidence-based places for people like this to live and get better," said Michael Alessandri, who heads the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, or CARD, at the University of Miami. "These are not throwaway individuals just because they are behaviorally challenged. They can get better."

State disability administrators said that Rios would be safe and well-cared for in a group home managed by MACtown, a private service provider for people with developmental disabilities. But, Soto said, she wasn't really offered any choices. There are very few programs in Florida for people like Rios, whose autism or intellectual impairments can lead to often severe behavioral outbursts.

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But it seemed like a poor fit for Soto almost from the beginning. On July 4, she said, she called MACtown to tell staff members that her son was fascinated by fireworks, and would want to see a local display. She said she also warned them to be "alert" to challenging behaviors.

On July 5, a behavior analyst from the group home called to tell her she needed to go to the hospital immediately. Rios had been injured during a restraint the day before, she said, and doctors could not treat the young man without her medical consent, as she was his legal guardian.

"He was trying to get out of the house and he became aggressive and he was not allowed to get out of the house," Soto said.

Rios had broken his nose and a finger, was in pain, and, as she would have predicted, was acting out.

"First I felt guilty. It was my responsibility to protect him, and I failed," Soto said.

Soto said she feels terribly about Kinsey, the behavior therapist who was shot. Kinsey was the person at MACtown with whom her son felt most at ease. His darker skin reminded Rios of his mother's last boyfriend, and Kinsey had always treated Rios with kindness.

When their worlds collided, and exploded, Kinsey was doing what he always did, trying to protect his client.

Now they were both in hospital beds trying to heal.

"Charles was shot physically," she said, "but my son has been traumatized by that incident."

Contact Carol Marbin Miller cmarbin@miamiherald.com or (305) 376-3211. Follow @Marbinius.