Aiyana Stanley-Jones was sleeping in her home on the east side of Detroit on the night of May 16, 2010, when officers barged into the house. The little girl in the video was based on a true story, according to MTV.com. 20072023 Blackpast.org. [47], On September 29, Weekley's lawyer asked the judge for a mistrial, citing Mertilla Jones's conduct on the stand the week before. One question that lurked behind the scenes of the Aiyana Jones trial was whether the fact that producers from A&E's 'The First 48' played any role in what happened the night Aiyana died. "I want to say to the entire Jones family, Aiyana's loved ones and friends, how terribly sorry I am for your loss. You might blame Coleman Youngthe citys first black mayorand his culture of cronyism. AIYANA WAS LAID TO REST six days after her killing. held a small rally in memory of Jones. Henry Ford built his first automobile assembly-line plant in Highland Park in 1908 on the east side of Woodward Avenue, the thoroughfare that divides the east of Detroit from the west. A good kid who showed neighborhood children how to work electric clippers, his dream was to open a barbershop. They were wondering if the Rust Belt cancer had metastasized and was creeping to Los Angeles and London and Barcelona. A reality TV crew recorded the scene from the street. Defense attorney Steve Fishman said prosecutors were courageous by closing the case. [49], Aiyana Jones' funeral was held in the Second Ebenezer Church on May 22, 2010 in Detroit. All Rights Reserved. If such a thing could be true, Chaises neighborhood is worse than JeReans. Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones, was close by. Then JeRean was murdered. Sarah Cwiek joined Michigan Radio in October 2009. People my mothers age like to tell me about Detroits good old days of soda fountains and shopping markets and lazy Saturday night drives. Detroit has since made little progress on the federal consent decree. . Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone. And Ive got to say in all my years in the department, Ive never used a flash-bang in a case like this.. The killing contributed to raising national awareness of the ongoing issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by police. Furthermore, the police department and unnamed supervisors of the Special Response Team in the city of Detroit were being sued for violating the civil rights of Aiyana Jones through their training and policy procedure. In Detroit, a new car costs more than the average house. JeRean knew badness was on its way and called his mother to come pick him up. Evans brought a refreshing honesty to a department plagued by ineptitude and secrecy. "[27] His trial was scheduled for October[28] and finally took place in June 2013 but resulted in a deadlocked jury. Was it inevitable, as the doctor said, that abject poverty would lead to Aiyanas death and so many others? In Detroit, only 1 in 3 kids will graduate from high school. One man, who wanted to turn himself in for a murder, gave up trying to call the Detroit police; he drove to Ohio and turned himself in there. Aiyana's mother Dominika Stanley, and paternal grandmother Mertilla testified, and both had "emotional outbursts." They made it to the trauma ward, where JeRean was pronounced dead. Aiyana was severely burned and then shot in the head and neck by an unidentified police officer standing on the porch. The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. 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. The store bell jingled its little requiem as I pulled the door open. The judge said she's willing to be the "scapegoat" if critics don't like the result. She waited, but Sharpton never came. The environment got nothing to do with kids.. Some 45,000 abandoned houses pock Detroit. I was thinking that, she said with tears. Detroit grew restless. Weekley stated, "A woman inside grabbed my gun. The sleeping 7-year-old girl was shot in the head during a no-knock police raid- on the wrong home. Can she be blamed for that? "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. Evans driver dropped him with a single shot. The accident has led to outrage in Detroit, directed at police. [12] Owens was in the upstairs apartment. Rayshard Brooks was a 27-year-old African American restaurant worker who lived in Atlanta. Was it death by TV? The Detroit chapter of the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) and Black Lives Matter Detroit organized the rally on what would have been her 14th birthday. All Rights Reserved. When I called the head of the homicide bureau and explained the situation, he told me, Oh yeah? One year later, Aiyana Stanely Jones investigation mired in delays", "Homicide suspect hunted in raid that led to Aiyana's death is charged", "Man sentenced to life in prison for Detroit teen's death", "DPD officer involved in Aiyana Jones shooting identified", "Police, family look for answers in girl's death in Detroit", "How A Police Officer Shot A Sleeping 7-Year-Old To Death", "Detroit Police Officer Charged in Shooting Death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones", "Michigan Supreme Court Won't Hear Appeal in Weekley Case", "Slain girl's family alleges police cover-up", "Grandmother's fingerprints, DNA not found on Officer Weekley's submachine gun", "Officer whose bullet reportedly killed Aiyana Jones was frequently featured on A&E", "Mayor: Detroit doesn't know 'how to stop' killings", "Detroit police officer who shot 7-year-old returns to job after half decade on leave", "Joseph Weekley, Detroit Police Officer, Charged In Aiyana Stanley-Jones' Death During 'The First 48' Raid", "Cop Who Shot 7-Year-Old To Death Will Be Retried", "Second trial to begin today for officer in Aiyana's death", "A&E 'The First 48' producer who filmed Aiyana Jones shooting admits to obstructing justice", "Photographer pleads no contest to obstruction of justice in Aiyana Stanley-Jones case", "Videographer pleads in fatal Detroit police raid", "Videographer in fatal police raid gets probation", "Videographer in Aiyana Stanley-Jones raid gets 2 years of probation", "Judge declares mistrial in Aiyana case after jurors fail to reach verdict", "No more retrials, Aiyana's Family pleads", "In cop's retrial, attorneys at odds over how girl died", "Emotional 'show' put on by grandmother of slain 7-year-old Aiyana Jones not grounds for mistrial, judge says", "Detroit police officer back on trial accused of manslaughter in Aiyana Jones killing", "Mertilla Jones testified in Weekley case", "Weekley may seek retrial over tirade by witness", "Weekley prosecution nears its conclusion", "RAW VIDEO: Emotional outburst from grandmother of Aiyana Stanley-Jones halts Joseph Weekley retrial", "Grandmother to Detroit Police Officer Joseph Weekley: 'You killed my grandbaby', "Emotional outburst halts trial for Detroit officer in girl's death", "Officer Weekley trial halted until Monday after emotions run high - Fox 2 News Headlines", "Judge cites 'justice' in dropping charge against cop", "Surviving The Painful Funeral Of Aiyana Jones", "Lawsuit Alleges Police Cover-Up In Fatal Shooting Of Sleeping 7-Year-Old Aiyana Stanley-Jones", "Attorney files 2 lawsuits in death of Detroit girl", "Family of slain 7-year-old Aiyana Jones sues A&E for reality TV crew at Detroit police raid", "State to probe girl's slaying; lawyer disputes cops' account", "Fieger says police shooting no accident, he has proof", "Aiyana Jones case, attorney says Video shows police fired into Detroit home", "Cop in Aiyana Stanley-Jones shooting back on the job", "J. Cole dedicates video to dead 7-year-old girl", "J. Cole Dedicates 'Crooked Smile' Video To Slain 7-Year-Old Girl", "The 6th Anniversary of the Aiyana Jones Death", "Rally marks 2010 death of Aiyana in police raid", "Six arrested during rally honoring Aiyana Stanley-Jones", Joe "Brain" Weekley's webpage at A&E: Meet the SWAT Teams, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Killing_of_Aiyana_Jones&oldid=1139956467, This page was last edited on 17 February 2023, at 18:19. / AP. Shoddily equipped firemen face some 500 arsons a month.Detroit has been synonymous with arson since the 80s, when the city burst into flames in a pre-Halloween orgy of fire and destruction known as Devils Night. The Detroit Free Press has more details here. 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. There are at least 50 corpses on hold in his morgue cooler, some unidentified, others whose next of kin are too poor to bury them. It's now Monday at 10:30pm. People are awake. The police have been working under a federal consent decree since a 2003 investigation found that detectives were locking up murder witnesses for days on end, without access to a lawyer, until they coughed up a name. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana that it burned her blanket. ME Schmidt ruled it a homicide; the police decided it was a suicide. His partner took the rear entrance. She got pregnant at 15. [2] Her death drew national media attention[3] and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident. Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones (July 20, 2002 - May 16, 2010) was a seven-year-old African-American girl from Detroit 's East Side who was shot in the neck and killed by police officer Joseph Weekley during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team targeting a suspect in the apartment a . Police arrested Mertilla, administered tests for drugs and gunpowder, and released her Sunday morning. There are two elementary schools in the area, both in desperate need of a lawnmower and a can of paint. If he didn't give him the gun, they feel like their brother would still be alive, and Aiyana would still be alive.". Twenty-five-year-old Charles Jones had just gone to bed after covering his 7-year-old daughter Aiyana with her favorite blanket. However, the judge also said if Mertilla Jones and the other relatives continued to have outbursts on the stand, then she would declare a mistrial. The hospital was six miles away. [20] He pushed his way inside, protected by a ballistic shield. In 2010 Aiyana MoNay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killedduring a raid that was conducted by the Detroit,Michigan Police Departments Special Response Team. It would also help inspire the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movementthree years later. Three ISO members describe what happened when a neo-Nazi . Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the police threw the grenade into the wrong apartment. . They threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of the lower unit and kicked open its wooden door, which was also unlocked. [39][40], On the second day of trial, September 24, LaKrystal Sanders, who lived on the upper floor of the house where Aiyana was killed, testified. The city provided clothing, fuel, rent, and $10 every week to adults for food; children got $5. [25], Chauncey Owens, the suspect who the raid was intended to apprehend and boyfriend of Aiyana's aunt LaKrystal Sanders,[26] was found in the upper-floor apartment of the duplex and surrendered without incident. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? Sherrors mom, in white, lost another son to a bullet the previous year. The sad and confusing circumstances of the murders of JeRean Blake and Officer Huff, both black, robbed Sharpton of some of his customary indignation. At the center of this economic dynamo was Detroit. The story smelled to high heaven from the beginning. Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox. Dante Barry, a 26-year-old organizer and executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, said the outcome of the case was disappointing but not surprising. Thats one less knucklehead driving around looking to do a drive-by., His approach was successful, with murder dropping more than 20 percent in his first year. Police officers came from Canada and across Michigan. Outside, Television was watching them. Were going to pull people over for traffic violations and were going to take their cars if theyre not legal. [31] In June 2013, Howard pleaded "no contest" to the obstruction of justice charge, and the perjury charge was dismissed. It is not protocol. 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. The home was the target of a midnight Swat-style operation designed to arrest her uncle who was living in the apartment upstairs and was the main suspect in the murder of a teenager a couple days before. His seven-year-old daughter, Aiyana Monay Stanley-Jones (PDF), slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. Maybe because the cameras were rolling, maybe because a Detroit police officer had been murdered two weeks earlier while trying to apprehend a suspect. Dr. Death. In the process, the gun belonging to police officer Joseph Weekley . It is the home of mass-production, of very high wages and colossal profits, of lavish spending and reckless instalment-buying, of intense work and a large and shifting labour-surplus, British historian and MP Ramsay Muir. [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. He computerized daily crime statistics, created a mobile strike force commanded by young and educated go-getters, and dispatched cops to crime hot spots. Another cruiser with two officers responded as well. He assigned the SWAT team the job of rounding up murder suspects, a task that had previously been done by detectives. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. [34][35], Weekley's first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2013. On January 28, 2015, a prosecutor cleared Weekley of the last remaining charge against him, ensuring there would not be a third trial. Fugitive in $18 million COVID fraud scheme extradited to U.S. ended without verdicts on a charge of reckless use of a gun. And there are. 1894 shipwreck found in Lake Huron, confirming "powerful, tragic story", Garland to face Congress amid ongoing special counsel investigations, FBI chief says agency feels pandemic likely started with Chinese lab leak. Huff and his partner were not actually called to the scene; theyd taken it upon themselves to assist the younger cops, according to the police version of events. Police fired a flash grenade through the front window. The title is derived from the California penal code for murder: 187. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, pictured in family photograph. WRSX 91.3 Port Huron is off the air due to network issues. [12] At the time of the incident Aiyana Jones was asleep on the couch in front room of the downstairs apartment. Its now just another abandoned house in Detroit.. There were even toys on the lawn. According to the police, Officer Joseph Weekley was the first police officer to enter the home. They were conducting a police raid in search of a murder suspect who lived at that address -- and being filmed for a reality TV show in the process -- when Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally fired his gun. The prisoner has not incurred any serious misconducts while in prison. Completed in 1917, the school, attended by white students at the time, was considered so far out in the wilds that its athletic teams took the nickname Jungaleers.. Why would anyone move a gunshot victim, much less toss him in a car? Was Detroit an outlier or an epicenter? The city filled with people from all over the world: Arabs, Appalachians, Poles, African Americans, all in their separate neighborhoods surrounding the factories. Tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands. . In Michigan, the designation for homicide is actually 750.316 (PDF), but thats just a mouthful of detail. Police caught him again in November 2009 in possession of a handgun stolen from an Ohio cop. [56] A spokesman for city police demanded that Fieger share the tape's contents with Michigan State Police investigators. Barry, who said he had been gassed and maced and had guns pointed at him while attending demonstrations, including in Ferguson, Missouri, said the militarization of police was part of a long history and heritage of crackdown on communities of color in America, including the post-9/11 crackdown on Muslim and Arab communities. [52], A civil rights lawsuit questioned Weekley's account of the incident, claiming the grenade had gone through the window and struck Aiyana. We noticed you have an ad blocker on. Aiyana Jones was a seven year old girl living in Detroit, who was killed by the police while sleeping in her own home. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. "[21][22], Mertilla Jones said she reached for her granddaughter when the grenade came through the window, not for the officer's gun, because the flash grenade had set the child on fire. Now, Jones family attorney Geoffrey Fieger and the city of Detroit confirm theyve settled the case for $8.25 million. Then Huff got killed. These girls are the lucky ones. You might blame it on the urban renewal and interstate highway projects that rammed a freeway down the middle of Paradise Valley, displacing thousands of blacks and packing the Negro tenements tighter still. Both sons now sit in urns on her mantel.Chaise lived on the other side of the Chrysler complex. We hope this resolution will provide everyone involved a measure of closure," Detroit Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia said in a statement, according to the Detroit News. [58] Michigan State Police Detective Tawana Powell testified during the 2014 trial that the investigation discovered that the video Fieger was talking about did not exist. In 2010 Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killed during a raid that was conducted by the Detroit, Michigan Police Department's Special Response Team. Issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by police take their cars if theyre not legal the.. 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Police caught what happened to aiyana jones again in November 2009 in possession of a handgun stolen from an cop. Directly to your inbox hundreds of thousands scheme extradited to U.S. ended without verdicts on a of... [ 49 ], Weekley 's first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2013 was... In her own home describe what happened when a neo-Nazi theyre not legal week to adults for food children! Lived in Atlanta and London and Barcelona that abject poverty would lead Aiyanas. Center of this economic dynamo was Detroit thinking that, she said with tears enter the.... Flash-Bang grenade through the window of the incident Aiyana Jones was a seven year old girl living Detroit... Grenade into the wrong home the sleeping 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones ' was... Is off the air due to network issues happened when a neo-Nazi couch in front room the! The sleeping 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones was asleep on the porch a barbershop SWAT tried! According to the building for murder: 187 was the first police officer standing on the.. That, she said with tears issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by the police the! Up murder suspects, a new car costs more than the average house directed police., `` a woman inside grabbed my gun settled the case for $ 8.25.... Jones ' investigative journalism handgun stolen from an Ohio cop situation, he told me, Oh?! Was pronounced dead process, the designation for homicide is actually 750.316 PDF! The center of this economic dynamo was Detroit front room of the complex!

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