- It's a wreck that is seared into the memories of people
who came across it, a three-vehicle crash that,
witnesses say, sounded like a bomb going off.
- The crash sent four people to the hospital --
one of them, 77-year-old George Cusick.
- George suffered a severe brain injury
and will never fully recover.
- Prosecutors in the case
argued that Matthew was attempting suicide
by driving into oncoming traffic,
but Rushin's family attorney told ABC News
that the incident was an accident.
- I kept telling those officers,
"No, I'm not trying to kill myself."
I lost control. I blacked out.
So.
My prison sentence was originally 50 years,
with 40 years suspended, so, 10 years, at the time.
- A conditional pardon was granted
after a thorough review of the case.
- Rushin's mother tells 13 News Now she is elated,
long saying her son is autistic
and not treated fairly the night of his arrest.
- The non-autism world doesn't understand who we are
and how we are and what we are.
- Without an understanding
of why Matthew was behaving the way that he did,
the police officers were set up to fail.
They were set up to misunderstand him,
from before they ever showed up on the scene.
And that's a training issue, not an intent issue.
- Maybe it wasn't him.
- Nope, it's him. - Okay, I want my hug.
- Ms Rushin, you take your baby home and keep him there,
and y'all have a good trip home.
- He's never coming back. - Never, never, never.
- Mwah!
There you go.
Are you gonna be able to drive?
The prosecution tried to say
that I was trying to kill myself.
They based that around what they think I said
when I was crawling out the back of my vehicle.
- I've got the possible at-fault driver
in 296, this Charger right here.
- Okay. - He's [audio drop]
squirrelly, trying to run over here and fake-crying,
and then he's talking about, "Oh, I just want to kill myself.
I wanted to kill myself." - Those words indicate
to the other officers what they should think.
So, it sets up a domino effect,
where one person's bias filters into everybody else,
setting the tone for the rest of the investigation
and figuring out what happened.
- As I was coming out of the U-turn,
I lost control of the vehicle,
and that's when I came into the oncoming traffic.
- Okay. - Alright.
- I first learned about the impact
that the accident had on George Cusick
when I was sitting in the back of the cop car in handcuffs.
Oh, my God.
Are they okay? - Just come on this way.
- Are they okay?
- They went to the hospital, so, yeah.
- Well, are they breathing?
Are they alive? - The last I heard was yeah.
That's the last I heard.
I didn't get much information, so.
- God.
It didn't feel real.
Like, knowing that I had hurt two people seriously,
like, severely, I felt terrible.
- And you're trying, basically, to convince Officer Dolida and I
that you were saying, you know,
that you were feeling like you wanted to kill yourself
or saying things because of what you saw.
But everybody else is pretty confident
that that was your intention.
- I wasn't trying to kill myself.
I don't know.
I don't know what I have to say or what I have to do
to convince y'all that I was not trying to kill myself.
I don't care [indistinct].
- They're going to see if they can look at your phone, okay?
- This is one of the reasons why not just knowledge training
but actually in-depth experiential training
with actually autistic people is so important for police officers
because they need to experience:
What does an autistic person moving through the world
look like to me, feel like to me?
How do I act towards that person when I, the police officer,
have adrenaline going in my system?
- I'm being honest with y'all.
- Okay. - I am.
- The governor of Virginia has recognized the injustice,
not only through releasing Matthew earlier,
but by issuing a pardon that states there is lack of evidence
that Matthew had any intent of harming anyone.
Loretta.
What is she doing? - There you go.
Part of me is still tied to the state of Virginia,
for obvious reasons, you know, the probation and pardon.
You see how she's trembling?
Yeah, she's nervous.
But I do feel free.
- Alright, Matthew, we got to do this
because I don't want them to say we're ever late.
Go ahead.
- How are you feeling today, Matthew?
- I'm doing alright.
I went for a run earlier. - How far do you run?
- Today I only did a mile,
but I usually do between four to six, depending on how I feel.
- Holy mackerel.
- Mom is always tense
when we have to go talk to the probation office,
so, when she gets tense, I get tense.
- What do you mean? Okay, Matthew.
- Okay, I understand it's a require.
I understand that.
But that does not take away from how I feel doing it.
I have to do it, so I will do it,
but I'm still going to feel some type of way,
talking to her or people like her.
- Why?
- It's just I've dealt with people like her
for the last two and a half years of my life.
I didn't expect to be coming home
and dealing with more people like that, okay?
I stim when I'm anxious and nervous around these people.
Stim -- I'm fidgeting with a rubber band.
I'm talking to the bird. I'm messing with the bird.
I'm telling myself jokes so I can relax.
Being locked up for two and a half years,
you're alone a lot,
so you're forced to be with yourself
and, through that, I was able to learn a lot about myself
and who I was and how I was and why I was.
When I was going to school, I mean, everyone had ADHD,
but no one was autistic,
or at least, no one knew of anyone that was autistic.
We're born processing the world differently,
seeing the world differently.
- He would likely have worked overtime,
either consciously or unconsciously,
to counteract the things that made him appear autistic.
- Everybody failed you because they thought, you know,
"You're an articulate, smart guy going to college,
so you must be 'mild' and nothing that's autistic matters.
You're just quirky."
- Yeah. I don't look autistic.
I don't act autistic. - Yeah.
I mean, you do to me.
- No, I mean, to other autistics,
I am exceptionally autistic, but to anyone just meeting me,
who isn't autistic, who's neurotypical,
I'm weird, and that's it.
- Yeah.
- Something that comes with you from prison
is a changed behavior,
because, in prison, you have to watch what you say to people
because you never know what could offend somebody
because you don't know people in there.
I've had instances where people have tried to attack me.
I would rather not say those out loud.
I'd rather them not be on. - On-camera?
- On-camera or out for the world to hear.
- We don't know how, internally,
Matthew's dealing with this, you know?
He may say, "Oh, I'm okay," and be in his room all day long.
Or, "Oh, I'm okay," and then
[crying] wake up in the middle of the night, screaming.
It's a hard healing process.
I'm sorry he went through that.
- What we got to do is move forward.
I mean, we can't do anything about it.
We're here now.
- [crying] I didn't know any better.
- It's fine. - I learned.
- Mm-hmm, I learned, too.
- Through the crash course in criminal justice.
- So did I. Trust me.
- When autistic people are calling for change
in police training and the justice system,
it's not about, "Oh, I'm autistic.
I should get a free pass."
That's not it at all.
What autistic people are asking for, what we're asking for is,
"Understand us, first, and then determine guilt."
- The scene of the accident is like a poster
on the wall in my mind.
Like, it's there, quite a few times a day.
I'm not exaggerating with that.
- He climbed out of the back of that red car.
Yeah.
- I'm so sorry for all the people
that that night affected.
I still pray for his full recovery every night, you know.
Every night, it's like, "God, if you can do something,
that would be great."
- If the police got accurate training with autistic people,
the police would make better calls,
and it might be a call to a support system,
instead of the interrogation room.
Maybe the interrogation room is totally warranted,
but that doesn't mean the person's disability
doesn't deserve attention and respect.
Without that kind of training, the police will always fail,
when it comes to autistic people,
and it's not their fault.
- My story needs to get to certain places on this Earth
because this is happening all around the world.
Things like that should not be happening.