Owens switched his moped for a Chevy Blazer. She's irresponsible," said Ron Scott, referring to Hathaway's decision to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charge before a jury at the second trial could consider it. One ran off. Now, Jones family attorney Geoffrey Fieger and the city of Detroit confirm theyve settled the case for $8.25 million. Weve got nothing but bullet fragments., A neighbor who tends the lawn in front of the dope house out of respect to Huff wonders why so many cops came in the first place, given that the police hardly come around at all, much less that many cops that fast on a home break-in.. One year after a Detroit police assault team shot 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones to death in her home while A&E's "First 48" TV show was filming, neither Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy nor U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has brought charges against those responsible. She later went to nursing school but got sidetracked by her own health problems. The story rated three paragraphs in the daily papers, and the media never followed up. In this shit, a one-year-old played next door, barefoot. Desperation, she said, feels like someones reaching down your throat and ripping out your guts. The Jones family also sued Weekley and the Detroit Police Department in 2015. Its police disinformation.. The appellatecourt ruledthe presiding judge in Jones'case hadn'tadequately answered jurors' questionsduring deliberations. Weekley stated, "A woman inside grabbed my gun. Not all of us are blessed.. Little Aiyana's death is heartbreaking! The day after Huff was killed, and under fire from the police for her leniency toward Gibson, Judge Hathaway went into the case file and made changes, according to notations made in the courts computerized docket system. You might blame the UAW, which demanded things like full pay for idle workers, or myopic Big Three management who, instead of saying no, simply tacked the cost onto the price of a car. Aiyanas death garnered national attention, including sharp criticism from the Revs. Aiyana was sleeping on the couch next to her grandmother when, just after midnight, Officer Weekley's SWAT team threw a flashbang grenade through the living room window, setting fire to . They turned on the lights and saw that she had been shot.. Technicians are currently working on the problem. Detroit demolishes only 500 homes a year, thanks to concerns over lawsuits and environmental hazards, as well as lack of funds and ineptitude. [12] Charles Jones, Aiyana's father, wore a black suit, pink tie and pink handkerchief in remembrance of his daughter as pink was her favorite color. She waited, but Sharpton never came. The conceit of the show is that homicide detectives have 48 hours to crack a murder case before the trail goes cold. What the fuck do you think? he said. The department was also cited for excessive force after people died in lockup and at the hands of rogue cops. . You can blame it on the John Deere mechanical cotton-picker of 1950, which uprooted the sharecropper and sent him north looking for a livingwhere he found he was locked out of the factories by the unions. Sharptons full of shit, said JeReans mother. [15], The building was a duplex; Owens's girlfriend LaKrysta Sanders lived in the upstairs apartment, while her mother and Aiyana Jones' grandmother, Mertilla Jones, lived in the downstairs apartment. Besides, there was always a job in America when you needed one. In Chief Evans defense, he seemed to understand one thing: After the collapse of the car industry and the implosion of the real estate bubble, there is little else Detroit has to export except its misery. Known as Half-Day Hathaway, the judge was removed from the bench for six months by the Michigan Supreme Court a decade ago for, among other things, adjourning trials to sneak away on vacation. "[27] His trial was scheduled for October[28] and finally took place in June 2013 but resulted in a deadlocked jury. Jones new family had been on the drift for the past few years as he tried to pull it together. The president of the school board, Otis Mathis, recently admitted that he had only rudimentary writing skills shortly before being forced to resign for fondling himself during a meeting with the school superintendent. The killing contributed to raising national awareness of the ongoing issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by police. Mertilla Jones was held overnight by Detroit police and then released. Specifically, since 1997 a 1033 program has enabled the transferring of billions of dollars worth of military equipment from the Department of Defense including mine-resistant protected vehicles originally developed by the South African defence force to thousands of small American communities. I saw the tape and wrote about its existence after the killing of Aiyana, but the story went nowhere until two months later, when someone in City Hall leaked a copy to the local ABC affiliate. But the grandmother says she was lying on the far side of the couch, away from the door. And he wouldnt even help her. On April 4, 2019, Aiyanas family settled with Detroit for $8.25 million. [50][bettersourceneeded] The casket was white and was afterwards driven to the grave by horse-drawn carriage. JeRean knew badness was on its way and called his mother to come pick him up. Responding to a breaking-and-entering and shots-fired call at 3:30 a.m., Officer Brian Huff, a 12-year veteran, walked into that dark house. Neighbor Paul Jameson, a former soldier whose wife had called in the break-in to 911, said the rookies ran toward the house and opened fire after Huff was shot. Take for instance the death of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was shot and killed during a police raid at their Detroit home. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder suspect after throwing a flash grenade to confuse anyone inside. WHat actually happened to this little girl? Aiyana Stanley-Jones was seven years old and asleep on a couch with her grandmother when Detroit police raided their east side home looking for a murder suspect in 2010. About 40 kids were milling around in front of the soft-serve window. The family of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was murdered by Detroit police more than two years ago, is still waiting for justice. It's hurting me. Testifying at the New Prospect Missionary Baptist Church.Stand at the corner of Lillibridge Street and Mack Avenue and walk a mile in each direction from Alter Road to Gratiot Avenue (pronounced Gra-shit). It was 2:40 in the afternoon on May 14 when JeRean went to the Motor City liquor store and ice-cream stand to get himself an orange juice to wash down his McDonalds. The crime most likely happened at the . His work has appeared in Time, Life, and Newsweek. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, pictured in family photograph. Sherrors was killed by a stray bullet while cutting a friends hair on a front porch just 27 days after JeRean died. First published on January 30, 2015 / 4:13 PM. February 24, 2023. It went straight through the childs head. He was charged twice with involuntary manslaughter, but both cases ended in mistrials. The manslaughter trial was declared a mistrial. Murder suspect Chauncey Louis Owens, the target of the raid, will be charged. Aiyana Jones' step aunt Kayia White and step mom Dominique Simpson, right, sit on the front porch next to a blood spattered sofa in Detroit on . I stared through the windshield at the little boy in the diaper playing amid the ruins, reached over, and switched it off. The crumbling houses still crumble. Two trials against Officer Joseph Weekley ended without verdicts on a charge of reckless use of a gun. They had even kept Aiyana in her old school, Trix Elementary, because it was something consistent in her life, a clean and safe school in a city with too few. He didn't elaborate. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. Parts of the Detroit River are now clean enough for swimming. Someone radioed in, and more police arrivedbut the official story of what happened that night has changed repeatedly. "We had to do it by paperwork, and they read the letters from my side of the family (during the parole hearing)," Cargill said. On his desk is a bronze bust of Geoffrey Fieger. Whenever I see a person who died of violence or misadventure, I think about the dead man with the open eyes on the dirty floor of the liquor store. European intellectuals wondered at the whirl of building and spending in the new America. [54][55], Attorney Fieger claimed that footage, from an undisclosed source, showed that the lethal bullet came from outside the home, rather than inside, as police said. "But I can tell you this: If anyone is looking for a scapegoat for justice, then you've got one here as owner, coach and quarterback. It was 12:40 am on Sunday, May 16, 2010. Huff entered with his gun still holstered. . [36] Aiyana's case would be the longest presiding case that Hathaway had in more than 20 years of being on the bench. The house next door to his is rubble smelling of burnt pine, pissed on by the spray cans of the East Warren Crips. That house, too, is on the citys East Side, a nondescript brick duplex with a crumbling garage whose driveway funnels into busy Schoenherr Road. The smell was beastly. But pollution didnt kill Detroit. Weekley claimed after he got through the front door that Joness paternal grandmother, Mertilla Jones, attempted to slap away the MP 5 submachine gun that he was holding. Aiyana Jones was killed nine years ago during a police raid gone wrong and no convictions were made. The city grew to 1.3 million people from 300,000 after Ford opened his Model T factory. Oh, stay your ass right here, Owens growled. Home. [9][10] Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. As Detroit led the nation in median income and homeownership, automation and foreign competition were forcing companies like Packard to shutter their doors. As for the tape that Geoffrey Fieger claimed would show the cops firing on Aiyanas house from outside, A&E turned it over to the police. They made it to the trauma ward, where JeRean was pronounced dead. Aiyanas pink-robed body was carried away by a horse-drawn carriage to the Trinity Cemetery, the same carriage that five years earlier had taken the body of Rosa Parks to Woodlawn Cemetery on the citys West Side. Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. No one cared much about Detroit or its industrial suburbs until the Dow collapsed, the chief executives of the Big Three went to Washington to grovel, and General Motors declared bankruptcy100 years after its founding. [59], On April 2, 2015, nearly five years following Jones's death, Officer Weekley was returned to active duty as a Detroit police officer. By police incompetence? Lyvonne Cargill wears a shirt that honors her son, JeRean Blake Nobles. In an attempt to distract the occupants, police fired a flash grenade through the front window of the lower apartment, where Aiyana Jones was sleeping. The flower shop is just a pile of bricks now, but despite what the Arab told me, I did not forget what I saw. [53] Two days after Jones's death, on May 18, 2010, attorney Geoffrey Fieger filed lawsuits on behalf of her family against A&E and the police. Aiyana Joness funeral was held on May 22, 2010, at the Second Ebenezer BaptistChurch in Detroit where Alfred (Al) Charles Sharpton Jr. gave the eulogy. And America is buying. [20] He pushed his way inside, protected by a ballistic shield. Thats five times as many as New York, in a city one-tenth the size. "It's irking me so bad," Cargill said. But defense attorney Steve Fishman says Jones has no credibility because she's told different stories about what happened. On October 4, 2011, a Wayne County grand jury indicted Officer Joseph Weekley for involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. Im stuck. Devils Night is no longer the big deal it used to be, topping out last year at around 65 arsons. "They said he'll be on parole until 2030, and he or his family can't be around my family. Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was asleep on the living room sofa in her family's apartment when Detroit police searching for a homicide suspect burst in and an officer's gun went off, fatally . The fire department is little better. She said she made no contact with any officers. She looked at her barefoot grandson playing in the wreckage of the dwelling next door and wondered if he would make it to manhood. But police officials have refused to discuss how one got shot in the foot. [12], An A&E reality TV television crew was accompanying the police Special Response Team gathering footage for The First 48. On May 14, 2010, Jones handed a .357 magnum pistol to his friend Chauncey Owens, who gunned down Cargill's son, 17-year-old Je'Rean Blake, outside the Motor City Marketplace on Mack at St. Jean on Detroit's east side. (And that statistic is true; I checked.). AP Photo Charles Jones, the father of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was killed early Sunday in Detroit, holds a photo of Aiyana in attorney Geoffrey Fieger's office in Southfield, Mich., Tuesday . Dr. Carl Schmidt is the chief medical examiner there. As the black population grew, so did black frustration over poor housing and rock-fisted police. In the witness box in September, Jones said: Im laying there screaming, asking someone to help my granddaughter because he shot her in the head. From all indications it appears that police operation were flawed and heavily influenced by camera crews who were filming the raid for A&E's crime show "The First 48," according to a published report. Skyscrapers sprang up virtually overnight. Why you do this to me? An investigation was promised. And now that the papers do cover Detroit, boosters complain about a lack of balance. It also allowed a man to escape the smoldering city. This was the first raid on a house since his death. Maybe because the cameras were rolling, maybe because a Detroit police officer had been murdered two weeks earlier while trying to apprehend a suspect. Some 45,000 abandoned houses pock Detroit. [6][7][8] On October 10, the judge declared a mistrial due to jury deadlock. That tape never aired, but it was used as evidence in Weekleys two trials for Aiyanas death. [41] If that isnt a record for any major metropolis, it is certainly a record for Detroit. [31] In June 2013, Howard pleaded "no contest" to the obstruction of justice charge, and the perjury charge was dismissed. It all happened in a matter of seconds. It regards itself as the temple of a new gospel of progress, to which I shall venture to give the name of Detroitism.. Detroit VA hospital harmed patients, altered records, investigation reveals, $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. The Detroit Free Press has more details here. Outside, a reality television crew filmed the events for A&E. The lawsuit asserts that police were outside of the home where they "blindly fired random shots," and one of the bullets fatally struck the 7-year-old child in the neck. . He might have smirked. Not even you.. Weekley insisted he accidentally pulled the trigger during a struggle with Aiyana's grandmother. He was shot in the head and killed last year. The police were searching for a murder suspect thought to be in the Jones home. Sometimes they come in a Crown Victoria with only a defibrillator and a blanket, because there are no other units available. They went hog wild. Aiyana Jones was 7 when she was killed in a police raid. Sharpton left and the Rev. The whole country knew it, and the whole country laughed. Even Time bought a house on the East Side last year for $99,000. The morning after he was shot, Chaises clippers were mysteriously deposited on his front porch, wiped clean and free of hair. His eyes and mouth were open and held that milky expression of a drunk who has fallen asleep with his eyes open. Fieger responded by saying he does not have the supposed video,[57] which he claims was made by the A&E Network reality show The First 48. The water in the Detroit River was so bad, it was said you could bottle it and sell it as poison. Evans told me then that major crimes were routinely underreported by 20 percent. 91.3 Port Huron 89.7 Lansing 91.1 Flint. I wouldnt wish this on nobody in the world. Was Detroit an outlier or an epicenter? It fired. There are lawyers and doctors and auto executives with nice homes and good jobs, community elders trying to make things better, teachers who spend their own money on classroom supplies, people who mow lawns out of respect for the dead, parents who raise their children, ministers who help with funeral expenses. I think its evil. A small crowd of agitated black people was gathered on the sidewalk. Rayshard Brooks was a 27-year-old African American restaurant worker who lived in Atlanta. Why you looking at me? said Owens, getting off the moped. The civil rights lawsuit, which alleges officers attempted to cover-up how Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed, names Officer Joseph Weekley, Robert Rowe, the Detroit Police Department, and the city . Thats how its supposed to be done.. The fact is a police officer threw the flash grenade through the window of the house that landed on Aiyana's blanket . Its about state-sanctioned violence., US police departments are increasingly militarised, finds report, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. On October 3, the judge, Cynthia Gray Hathaway, dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge against Weekley, leaving him on trial for only one charge: recklessly discharging a firearm. The problem once the police start amassing these kinds of weapons and tools and absorb a certain mentality, is it just increases the probability that they are going to deploy it even when not warranted, Edwards says. When I was a teenager, my mother owned a struggling little flower shop on the East Side, not far from where Aiyana was killed. Family: 7-year-old shot by police was asleep. Social media and keyword searches can tell much about the popularity and worth of a topic. [2], After a one-year internal and federal investigation, on October 4, 2011, a grand jury indicted Weekley on involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. [41][44][45][46] Because of Mertilla Jones's outburst, the judge stopped the trial until September 29. He got paid exactly what he was supposed to be paid.. [12] Owens was in the upstairs apartment. 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