On his desk is a bronze bust of Geoffrey Fieger. Take for instance the death of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was shot and killed during a police raid at their Detroit home. Weekley will not go to a third trial. I was allowed to meet with Charles Jones the following morning at Fiegers office, but with the caveat that I could only ask him questions about the evening his daughter was killed. Evans drivera copgave chase. The author of "What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones" Charlie LeDuff begins with a brief overview of the surroundings in Detroit, where the homicide took place. 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. In this way, what happened to J Cole's daughter? Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. [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. On a hot afternoon around one Mothers Day, I was working in the back greenhouse. 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 was a sweatbox, and I went across the street to the liquor store for a soda pop. It's hurting me. Soon, the Motor Citys population surpassed that of Boston and Baltimore, old East Coast port cities founded on maritime shipping when the world moved by boat. Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. [41] With Chief Evans vacationing overseas with a subordinate, Fieger ran wild, holding a press conference where he claimed he had seen videotape of Officer Weekley firing into the house from the porch. On 16 May 2010, Aiyana was shot dead by Weekley in the middle of the night, as she slept on a sofa inside her home on the east side of Detroit. A good kid who showed neighborhood children how to work electric clippers, his dream was to open a barbershop. Devils Night is no longer the big deal it used to be, topping out last year at around 65 arsons. Funeral for Chaise Sherrors, JeReans best friend. Sheffield came to see Cargill. European intellectuals wondered at the whirl of building and spending in the new America. The family is seeking $7.5 million in damages and a jury trial conceded by the court filing. Officers deployeda "flash bang" grenadeand kicked in the front door, and raid team leader Joseph Weekley led the crewinto the house. The team, which had received intelligence that at least one rifle was in the house,wasaccompanied by a crew from the cable TV show, "First 48.". By the end of the following day, police had identified Chauncey Owens as a suspect in Blake's death and obtained a warrant to search 4054 Lillibridge[12] St, where Owens was believed to be hiding. Do you got a problem or something? We believe some of them were struck by friendly fire, the high-ranking cop told me. [38] AP Photo/The Detroit News, John T. Greilick, How Alaska became one of fentanyl's deadliest frontiers, Pennsylvania police seized gloves, flashlight from home of Idaho murders suspect, Where things stand in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial. In this current era, what she calls her "most confident" yet, she's channeling none other than her go-getter Bel-Air character Hilary Banks . "I want to say to the entire Jones family, Aiyana's loved ones and friends, how terribly sorry I am for your loss. People are drinking. On May 14, 2010, JeRean Blake, a senior at Southeastern High School of Technology and Law was shot and killed near an intersection on Detroits east side. I mean, hiring the Rosa Parks carriage?, I dont owe Sheffield shit, says Jones. Evans brought a refreshing honesty to a department plagued by ineptitude and secrecy. On October 10, the second trial ended in another mistrial. 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.. Lyvonne Cargill wears a shirt that honors her son, JeRean Blake Nobles. A small crowd of agitated black people was gathered on the sidewalk. Outside, Television was watching them. ReverendAl Sharpton gave the eulogy. Police report that they arrested the suspect at the duplex where the . Legal name. Lawsuits claim it wrecked their teeth. When we look at accountability and an institution that was not designed for black people and that was not designed in the interest of black people, he says, how do you find justice in an already unjust system?. 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. There are no fewer than two TV dramas, two documentaries, and three reality programs being filmed here. By wit and will, he managed to make it through. Weekley claimed Aiyana Jones' paternal grandmother, Mertilla Jones, attempted to slap his MP5 submachine gun, causing it to fire. The radio was tuned to NPR and A Prairie Home Companion came warbling out of my speakers. In 2007, he attacked a cop and tried to take his gun. Im alive. The raid happened early Sunday morning. 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. The city provided clothing, fuel, rent, and $10 every week to adults for food; children got $5. The mayors office is said to have a copy, as well as the Michigan State Police, who are now handling the investigation. The walls are covered with photographs of Geoffrey Fieger. And Ive got to say in all my years in the department, Ive never used a flash-bang in a case like this.. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. The hospital was six miles away. 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. Seconds after Aiyana's blanket caught fire, the SWAT team stormed through the door, and mistakenly shot Aiyana through the neck, killing her. "He has completed various programming and is active in vocational training. 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. 2023 www.detroitnews.com. On May 21, 2016, nearly six years after Joness death, the Detroit chapter of Black Lives Matter organized the first rally in her memory. He computerized daily crime statistics, created a mobile strike force commanded by young and educated go-getters, and dispatched cops to crime hot spots. They killed a child and then they lied about it.. Judge Hathaway emphasized that two juries, in 2013 and 2014, couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. Six individuals, who chained themselves to a Detroit Police Department precinct, were arrested Wednesday evening during a rally honoring Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a 7-year old who was shot and. . "[27] His trial was scheduled for October[28] and finally took place in June 2013 but resulted in a deadlocked jury. These girls are the lucky ones. Moreover, the Detroit public school system is the worst performer in the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, with nearly 80 percent of eighth-graders unable to do basic math. JeRean knew badness was on its way and called his mother to come pick him up. Owens, a habitual criminal, was arrested upstairs minutes after Aiyanas shooting and charged for the slaying of JeRean. All Rights Reserved. Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. "Aiyana's death was a tragic loss for her family and has been a heavy burden on our community. The silent suffering.. Jones does not have a release date identified, although he could be freed as early as Thursday, Gautz said. The story rated three paragraphs in the daily papers, and the media never followed up. He assigned the SWAT team the job of rounding up murder suspects, a task that had previously been done by detectives. Jones, 25, a slight man with frizzy braids, wore a dingy T-shirt. 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. Police first floated the story that Aiyanas grandmother had grabbed Weekleys gun. Adam Rose/Netflix In addition to traveling, the Chicago-based pair is looking at a potential move once Iyanna, 27, heads back to school to get her master's degree. On May 16, 2010, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was shot and killed in her sleep by Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley after he accidentally entered the wrong apartment in an unannounced SWAT team raid. In the case of the night Aiyana was killed, many feel the situation did not call for a military-style bust at midnight. The dismissal was at the request of Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy, who called the decision, which by law cannot be appealed, unfortunate. Jones new family had been on the drift for the past few years as he tried to pull it together. Jones and two other men known as Lil James and Dirt rode along for JeReans ass-whipping. [4], Officer Joseph Weekley was charged in connection with Jones' killing. His body was transferred to Dr. Schmidt and the Wayne County morgue. There are two elementary schools in the area, both in desperate need of a lawnmower and a can of paint. The environment didnt affect us none, Jones said. The ACLU report found that only 7% of Swat raids were in hostage or active shooter situations situations that justify such extreme responses and 79% were effectuating search warrants, situations that do not call for Swat interventions. Murder suspect Chauncey Louis Owens, the target of the raid, will be charged. Based on the findings from a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in June 2014 and entitled War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing, which looked at thousands of documents from police departments across the country, Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the ACLUs criminal law reform project, says needlessly deploying Swat teams is part of a trend among nationwide police forces which increasingly [see] themselves as military tactical units. . Charlie LeDuff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, filmmaker, and multimedia reporter. They drove her there every morning, five miles. Weekley, a member of an elite police unit, was the first officer through the door during a chaotic . She was seven years old. [47], On September 29, Weekley's lawyer asked the judge for a mistrial, citing Mertilla Jones's conduct on the stand the week before. Fieger alleged a police cover-up. The presence of children in the house was known. The day I visited, a Hollywood starlet (PDF) was tailing the doctor, studying for her role as the medical examiner in ABCs new Detroit-based murder drama Detroit 1-8-7. People taking advanage of my benevolence. Forget what you saw, little man. The crime most likely happened at the . Weekley left the courtroom through a private door. Im not representing the father; Im speaking for the daughter. He also pointed out that while Jones remains a person of interest in JeReans murder, he has not been arrested. Juries twice failed to reach a verdict in Weekleys case, first in June 2013 and then in October 2014. Were going to pull people over for traffic violations and were going to take their cars if theyre not legal. 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. He came here for publicity. 3) Weekley's claims that Mertilla Jones grabbed . The city reached a peak population of 1.9 million people in the 1950s, and it was 83 percent white. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, pictured in family photograph. Why you looking at me? said Owens, getting off the moped. [12], Owens was later found guilty of Blake's murder. Detroit VA hospital harmed patients, altered records, investigation reveals, $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. According to reports, seconds after entering the house, Weekley fired the fatal shot. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. And now that the papers do cover Detroit, boosters complain about a lack of balance. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? 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. You could blame it on the gas shocks of the 70s that opened the door to foreign car competition. Even if you check the TT's of each city Aiyana is nowhere to . The service was held at Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit, a drab cake-shaped megachurch near the Chrysler Freeway. Now Detroit has fewer than 800,000 people, is 83 percent black, and is the only American city that has surpassed a million people and dipped back below that threshold. The story smelled to high heaven from the beginning. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. (Theyd jerry-rigged a contraption where the fax pushes a door hinge, which falls on a screw wired to an actual alarm.) It was a white cop who killed the girl, but Detroit is Americas largest black city with a black mayor and a black chief of police. But I felt unraveling this one death could help diagnose what has gone wrong in this city, so I decided to retrace the events leading up to that pitiable moment on the porch on Lillibridge Street. The sad and confusing circumstances of the murders of JeRean Blake and Officer Huff, both black, robbed Sharpton of some of his customary indignation. Weekley shot Aiyana Stanley-Jones as she slept on a couch in a Detroit home in 2010. Weekley's first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2013. As officer Joseph Weekley walks free, another community is demanding answers about the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. The jury stall resulted in seven voting "not guilty" and five voting "guilty". Stanley suddenly emerged from her stupor: Whats that got to do with it? she hissed. Go ahead, walk in the Detroit River and disappear. But I cant. Dont bother locking it. 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. Editors note: On October 4, 2011, following a yearlong investigation by the Michigan state police, Officer Weekley was charged with involuntary manslaughter and careless discharge of a firearm. As the black population grew, so did black frustration over poor housing and rock-fisted police. Cargill said because of COVID-19 restrictions, she was unable to attend Jones' parole hearings to contest his release. They were conducting a police raid in search of a. Why would anyone move a gunshot victim, much less toss him in a car? IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the morning of May 16 and the neighbors say the streetlights were out on Lillibridge Street. "[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. It was all for the cameras. What the fuck you looking at?. The whole country knew it, and the whole country laughed. 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