‘He didn’t assault anybody.’ Man shot by Miami cops amid mental health crisis charged
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Miami police shoot Liberty City man having a mental health crisis
On March 7, a Miami police officer shot Donald Armstrong six times while he was on his mother’s Liberty City porch, having a mental health crisis. Police say he had a “pointed weapon” and approached them; advocates and family said otherwise.
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Donald Armstrong was shot multiple times by Miami police on his mother’s porch in Liberty City after she called 911 to protect him earlier this month. Now, a conflicting narrative has emerged: the responding officers are accusing Armstrong of assaulting them, court documents reveal.
Armstrong, 47, was charged with aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, a felony, and resisting an officer without violence, a misdemeanor. He was booked Sunday into the Miami-Dade County Pre-Trial Detention Center and remains jailed as of Tuesday afternoon.
It’s not known when Armstrong left Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, where he was taken for his injuries, nor the location in which he was arrested.
He appeared in bond court Monday for the misdemeanor charge — with bail set at $500. A judge has yet to grant a bond for the felony charge, though court records indicate Armstrong retained a public defender and has since pleaded not guilty.
READ MORE: Video shows Miami police shooting man repeatedly. He’s in critical condition, police say
Assistant public defender Matthew Corbett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Miami police also didn’t comment on the arrest. In a March 8 statement, Police Chief Manuel Morales said: “Transparency and accountability to our community will always remain our goal...I pledge to ensure that our department does better in addressing calls involving mental and behavioral issues.”
“I am asking all of us to pray for Mr. Armstrong and his family during this difficult time,” he added.
What prompted police to fire 10 rounds?
Armstrong’s confrontation with officers and the subsequent 10 bullets fired at him were all caught on video by several nearby residents. A two-minute-long video went viral on social media, spurring a wave of outrage.
Police quickly divulged what they believed led up to the altercation and the cops’ decision to fire, but Armstrong’s recent arrest report goes into further detail — including the “sharp object” he allegedly possessed.
During the early afternoon of March 7, his mother, Denise Armstrong, called 911 asking for officers to come to her home, 5703 NW Seventh Court, due to his behavior, the report read.
“She stated [Armstrong] was going through an episode and possibly high on narcotics,” it read.
A group of officers confronted him on the porch of his mother’s home, where he was “armed with what appeared to be a long, sharp object.” The report described it as a “dirk,” which is a long-straight bladed dagger.
“[Armstrong] was located on the porch of the residence acting in a bizarre manner,” the report read. “He was screaming at all the officers... at one point [he] is heard yelling to the officers to shoot him in the heart.”
READ MORE: ‘Don’t kill my child’: Mom of man shot by Miami cops says she called 911 to protect him
Police gave Armstrong “loud verbal commands” numerous times to drop the purported object. When he refused and paced away from them, an officer struck him with a stun gun, according the report.
He proceeded to remove the stun gun prongs, prompting the officer to fire a second round. Police wrote in the report he became enraged and lunged in their direction.
“[Armstrong] was shot multiple times, falling to the ground causing the object to fall out of his hand,” the report read.
The arrest form does not detail any physical interactions between Armstrong and the officers, except when they tended to his wounds. However, one form of aggravated assault deemed an arrestable offense is the “intentional, unlawful” spoken threat to commit a felony — meaning an act of “violence” is not needed to be charged, according to Florida statutes.
Armstrong was on probation when the shooting occurred, after ending a roughly 17-month prison sentence in September for charges that include aggravated battery on a pregnant woman, aggravated assault, and burglary of an unoccupied dwelling, records show. Since 2005, he’s had three stints in state prison stemming from past drug and theft charges.
‘He didn’t assault anybody’
When Lonnie Armstrong learned of his cousin Donald’s arrest, he called the aggravated assault charge “crazy.”
“He didn’t assault anybody,” Armstrong asserted.
Dr. Armen Henderson, too, was dumbfounded when he received word that Armstrong had been charged. As medical director of the Healing and Justice Center, he was one of the many activists who denounced the police shooting at a press conference on Thursday.
“They’re treating him like he’s a perpetrator when they should be treating him as a patient, as a victim of a violent crime,” Henderson said Tuesday. “It really underscores the problems that we face in the community but also, within the medical industrial complex.”
READ MORE: Miami activists denounce police for shooting Black man having mental health crisis
The Healing and Justice Center, a public safety program based in Liberty City and Overtown, is an organization focused on limiting Black and brown people’s exposure to the criminal justice system.
“It’s necessary for us to look at police as perpetrators of violence, specifically in Black communities,” Henderson articulated. “And in this case, you watch the video, was an officer even touched? [Armstrong] got tased. He got shot. Which officer did he get combative with? The officer that shot him?”
This story was originally published March 19, 2024 at 4:20 PM.
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