Im alive. Still, as the American middle class collapses, its worth perhaps remembering that the East Side of Detroitthe place where Aiyana, JeRean, and Officer Huff all diedwas once its industrial cradle. These Wigs Install in Seconds. They killed a child and then they lied about it.. WRSX 91.3 Port Huron is off the air due to network issues. . The killing contributed to raising national awareness of the ongoing issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by police. DETROIT - At the prosecutor's request, a judge on Friday dismissed the last charge against a Detroit police officer who fatally shot a 7-year-old girl during a raid. You might blame postwar industrial policies that sent the factories to the suburbs, the rural South, and the western deserts. 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. 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. The individual being sought at the multi-family dwelling was a suspect in a murder that took place at about 3:00 p.m. the previous Friday. AS SUMMER DRAGGED on, the story of Aiyana faded from even the regional press. Joneswas retried in 2019 for manslaughter and for being a habitual offender, and was sentenced to 10-20 years, with2,841 days credit for time served. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commandowhod been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWATburst into the house. Thats a hell of a pair of bookends, I offered. 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. 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. We noticed you have an ad blocker on. ReverendAl Sharpton gave the eulogy. Both trials ended with hung juries. In the end, Gibson was charged with Huffs murder and the attempted murders of four more officers. Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones, was close by. People are awake. Owens didn't like the way the Southeastern High School teen had looked at him, according to court testimony. The family of a 7-year-old who was fatally shot during a botched raid in 2010 is suing Detroit police, alleging officers lied about how she was killed as part of a cover-up. Jones and two other men known as Lil James and Dirt rode along for JeReans ass-whipping. 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. For that he was given simple probation. [11], The jury claimed that race did not affect the decision of their verdict. [19], Police officers, bystanders, and residents of the home disagreed about the events that followed. African American History: Research Guides & Websites, Global African History: Research Guides & Websites, African American Scientists and Technicians of the Manhattan Project, Envoys, Diplomatic Ministers, & Ambassadors, Foundation, Organization, and Corporate Supporters. [16], Aiyana Jones was the daughter of Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley. Detroit VA hospital harmed patients, altered records, investigation reveals, $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. No weapons were found on ANY person in the house after the raid, including Charles Jones and Aiyana's mother Dominika, Aiyana and her two toddler brothers, Mertilla Jones and her sister, and two adult cousins of Charles. Fiegers suburban office is a shrine to Geoffrey Fieger. It feels like there aint no love no more.. His body was transferred to Dr. Schmidt and the Wayne County morgue. 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. Can she be blamed for that? The ones pictured here are all found on one block. The fact is a police officer threw the flash grenade through the window of the house that landed on Aiyana's blanket . Coco Jones has lived many lives. What did? As officer Joseph Weekley walks free, another community is demanding answers about the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. It was all for the cameras. The presence of children in the house was known. But it was dark. Defense attorney Steve Fishman said prosecutors were courageous by closing the case. It just goes on, she said. But Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally shot Aiyana in the head, killing her. Once at Aiyanas graveside, Charles Jones released a dove. Thirty-four hours earlier, JeRean Blake Nobles, 17, had been shot outside a liquor store on nearby Mack Avenue; an informant had IDd a man named Chauncey Owens as the shooter and provided this address. The case garnered national headlines for all of the obvious reasons: an innocent child caught in police crosshairs, another black life taken in a city filled with heartache. It was 12:40 am on Sunday, May 16, 2010. In Michigan, the designation for homicide is actually 750.316 (PDF), but thats just a mouthful of detail. 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. Radley Balko | 5.24.2010 3:00 PM. [37], Weekley's retrial started in September 2014. If someone needs a scapegoat for what's happening here - and what's happening here is justice - then put it on me.". [2], Weekley was a member of Detroit's SWAT team and a frequent subject on the A&E Network (A&E), whose film crews were also filming the investigation for the documentary TV series The First 48. 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. A good kid with average grades, JeRean went to Southeastern High, which is situated in an industrial belt of moldering Chrysler assembly plants. The story smelled to high heaven from the beginning. Weekley will not go to a third trial. Aiyana was killed when police raided a house to capture a murder suspect. Was Detroit an outlier or an epicenter? Terms of Service apply. [32][33] Allison Howard was sentenced to two years of probation in July 2013, and fined $2,000. Later that day, Detroit Police identified Chauncey Owens as a suspect in the shooting and a warrant was issued for his arrest. A woman was in his car, the motor running. Forget what you saw, little man. "[42][43] [12] At the time of the incident Aiyana Jones was asleep on the couch in front room of the downstairs apartment. 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. As our Detroit reporter, she is helping us expand our coverage of the economy, politics, and culture in and around the city of Detroit. I got something for you.. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was 7 years old when she was killed by a single bullet to the head. 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 . And America is buying. [23] At Weekley's retrial in 2014, it was disclosed that Mertilla's fingerprints were not found on Weekley's gun. Officers deployeda "flash bang" grenadeand kicked in the front door, and raid team leader Joseph Weekley led the crewinto the house. Its some lil niggas at the store talking shitlets go whip they ass, Detective Theopolis Williams later testified that Owens told him during his interrogation. Weekley was the first officer to enter the home, seconds after a flashbang grenade a war device created by the British SAS in the 1960s to disorient with a blinding flash and a temporarily deafening noise was lobbed into it. Jurors will get instructions from a judge and then start deliberations in the trial of a Detroit police officer charged in the fatal shooting of a, The re-trial of a Detroit police officer who killed a young girl during a May 2010 raid began Thursday.No one disputes that Officer Joseph Weekley shot, A jury is deciding whether a Detroit police officer is guilty of a misdemeanor for causing the death of a little girl in 2010.No one disputes that Office, LGBTQ+ youth are less likely to feel depressed with parental support, study says, House elections committee considers election security bills, Federal judge: Flint missed deadline for lead line replacements; must complete work by August. Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. Outside, Television was watching them. [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. "He has completed various programming and is active in vocational training. The environment got nothing to do with kids.. [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. I saw him in the face of my sister, who died a violent death in a filthy section of Detroit a decade ago. 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. The Detroit Police Department was in search of a murderer, and mistakenly raided Aiyana's home. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder. I think its one of the lowest things I have ever seen.. 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. [41][44][45][46] Because of Mertilla Jones's outburst, the judge stopped the trial until September 29. In Detroit, the official response time of an ambulance to a 911 call is 12 minutes. Evans drivera copgave chase. McNeal wondered how she was going to pay the $3,000 for her sons funeral. 91.7 Ann Arbor/Detroit 104.1 Grand Rapids The prisoner has not incurred any serious misconducts while in prison. (And that statistic is true; I checked.). Horace Sheffield, a local version of Sharpton, got stiffed for $4,000 in funeral costs, claiming Aiyanas father made off with the donations people gave to cover it. [41] So what? Fieger barked. Many are as fucked up and sad as Aiyanas. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? So Dr. Schmidt keeps them on layaway, zipped up in body bags as family members wait for a ship to come in that never seems to arrive. Legal name. The silent suffering.. It would be easy to lay the blame on McNeal for the circumstances in which she raised her sons. Twenty-five-year-old Charles Jones had just gone to bed after covering his 7-year-old daughter Aiyana with her favorite blanket. The frightened black man attempted to save himself. 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. Robert Bobb was hired in 2009 as the emergency financial manager and given sweeping powers to balance the books. [12] Owens was in the upstairs apartment. She was only a baby, man. But even he couldnt stanch the tsunami of red ink; the deficit ballooned more than $140 million under his guidance. He admitted in his first trial that, "It's my gun that shot and killed a 7-year-old girl. Paramedics say it is routinely much longer. Inexplicably, its carcass still stands and burns incessantly. His murder led to the police raid that killed Aiyana.With large swaths of the city rewildingempty lots are returning to prairie and woodland as the city depopulatesSoutheastern was slated to absorb students from nearby Kettering High this year as part of a massive school-consolidation effort. This happened on Sunday. What happened after that is a matter of conjecture, as Detroit officials have had problems getting their stories straight. Little Aiyana's death is heartbreaking! Owens, a habitual criminal, was arrested upstairs minutes after Aiyanas shooting and charged for the slaying of JeRean. The service was held at Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit, a drab cake-shaped megachurch near the Chrysler Freeway. The sad and confusing circumstances of the murders of JeRean Blake and Officer Huff, both black, robbed Sharpton of some of his customary indignation. 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. Her parents say they hope Aiyana will be remembered as more than a symbol of heightened tension in a city in crisis. The family of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Detroit police officers, following a raid that led to the death of the child. Over 10 years ago, Detroit police executed a nighttime raid at a home on the city's east side in search of a murder suspect. 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