Aiyana Jones, Up Closed, https://upclosed.com/people/aiyana-monay-stanley-jones/; Aiyana Jones, Mother Jones, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/aiyana-stanley-jones-detroit/; Aiyana Jones, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/aiyana-stanley-jones-joseph-weekley-trial_n_5824684.html; CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aiyana-stanley-jones-case-final-charge-dropped-against-detroit-cop-in-fatal-raid/. 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. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was 7 years old when she was killed by a single bullet to the head. Then there is the thought that Detroit is simply a boomtown that went bust the minute Henry Ford began to build it. Evans told me then that major crimes were routinely underreported by 20 percent. The trial of a Detroit police officer who fatally shot a seven-year-old girl began today.Officer Joseph Weekley shot Aiyana Stanley-Jones during . Killing of Aiyana Jones. "[60], In September 2013, J. Cole published a music video dedicated to Jones for his song Crooked Smile, featuring TLC on YouTube. Subscribe today and get a full year of Mother Jones for just $14.95. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. The number was actually 375. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. [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. The sad and confusing circumstances of the murders of JeRean Blake and Officer Huff, both black, robbed Sharpton of some of his customary indignation. Dont bother locking it. Jarrette Jones and Iyanna McNeely. [12] Owens was in the upstairs apartment. Were here today not to find blame, but to find out how we never have to come here again, said Sharpton, standing in the grand pulpit. And Ive got to say in all my years in the department, Ive never used a flash-bang in a case like this.. 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. Aiyana Jones was a seven year old girl living in Detroit, who was killed by the police while sleeping in her own home. Lyvonne Cargill wears a shirt that honors her son, JeRean Blake Nobles. The city grew to 1.3 million people from 300,000 after Ford opened his Model T factory. Sanders was Aiyana Jones's paternal aunt, the girlfriend of Chauncey Owens, and the daughter of Mertilla Jones. 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. IT MIGHT BE a stretch to see anything more than Detroits problems in Detroits problems. They want to blame her parents and her aunt who is engaged to the murder suspect. In August 2014, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison on four counts, including false imprisonment and felony cruelty to children. Soon, the air was the color of a filthy dishrag. Then eight, then eleven. Young Municipal Center in Detroit. I think its evil. 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. Lord Jesus, I ain't never seen nothing like that in my life."--Mertilla Jones, Aiyana's grandmother. But our ammos so bad, we cant do ballistics testing. The auto industry allowed for sprawl. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. Then Huff got killed. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and "[27] His trial was scheduled for October[28] and finally took place in June 2013 but resulted in a deadlocked jury. I asked him if the way he was raising his daughter, the people he exposed her to, or the neighborhood where they livedwith its decaying houses and liquor storesmay have played a role. 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. "They said he'll be on parole until 2030, and he or his family can't be around my family. The First 48 photographer Allison Howard was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. 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. Chaises mother, Britta McNeal, 39, sat on the porch staring blankly into the distance, smoking no-brand cigarettes. For community members and advocates, the bigger question is why a Swat team was deployed in the first place. Bobb did uncover graft and fraud and waste, however. At the prosecutors request, Hathaway dismissed the last charge against Joseph Weekley. Aiyanas death garnered national attention, including sharp criticism from the Revs. The programs six-minute sizzle reel begins with Evans dressed in full battle gear in front of the shattered Michigan Central Rail Depot, cradling a semiautomatic rifle and declaring that he would do whatever it takes to take back the streets of Detroit. A few minutes after that, JeReans mother, Lyvonne Cargill, arrived and got behind the wheel of the car that friends had dragged him into. Chauncey Owens, the uncle wanted on murder charges, was said to be going in and out of the house as normal and could have been apprehended during the day. The frightened black man attempted to save himself. He had been married eight years and had three daughters and a stepson. The accident has led to outrage in Detroit, directed at police. He is charged with involuntary manslaughter and careless discharge of a. By 1958, 20 percent of the Detroit workforce was jobless. By police incompetence? 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. 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 . Sharptons people called JeReans mother, Lyvonne Cargill, promising to come over to her house after Aiyanas funeral. She was seven years old. In the process, the gun belonging to police officer Joseph Weekley . The lawsuit charges Rowe[who?] Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. But in 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. It was all for the cameras. [16], Aiyana Jones was the daughter of Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley. . In October, judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway dismissed a charge of involuntary manslaughter, citing a lack of evidence. Behind him stood two rookies. You could blame it on the gas shocks of the 70s that opened the door to foreign car competition. It all happened in a matter of seconds. 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. Chief Evans might have survived it all, had he, too, not been drawn to the lights of Hollywood. On Friday, Hathaway dismissed a lesser second charge, of reckless use of a firearm. Inexplicably, its carcass still stands and burns incessantly. 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. Outside, three men were loading the boiler, tubs, and sinks into a trailer to take to the scrap yard. As it turns out, he was filming a pilot for his own reality show, entitled The Chief. Jones, too, later became a person of interest in JeReans murderhe allegedly went along for the ridebut Jones denies it, and hes lawyered up and moved to the suburbs. I cant heal properly because of it. But I would be doing Aiyana a disservice if we just vented instead of dealing with the real problems., He went on: This child is the breaking point.. After the finale aired, we didn't know whether they're still together or not until the reunion on March 4, but a little social media sleuthing told us they were still . You dont go into a home around midnight. IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the morning of May 16 and the neighbors say the streetlights were out on Lillibridge Street. It is not protocol. The crumbling houses still crumble. Except there aint no job. 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. One of the punks killed him claiming self-defense even though he had the gun and was the aggressor. Bagpipes played and the rain fell. "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. Assistant prosecutor Rob Moran told the judge that the misdemeanor was being dropped in the "best interests of justice." Like so many across the country, shes being evicted with no job and no place to go. 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 family of Aiyana Jones, the 7-year-old girl accidentally killed by a Detroit police officer during a raid in 2010, has reached settlement with the city o. Were taking whats left.. Judge Hathaway emphasized that two juries, in 2013 and 2014, couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. On January 28, 2015, the remaining charge on Weekley, a misdemeanor for careless discharge of a firearm causing death, was dismissed. Home. So what? Fieger barked. 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. But is she responsible for police officers with broken computers in their squad cars, firefighters with holes in their boots, ambulances that arrive late, a city that cant keep its lights on and leaves its vacant buildings to the arsonists match, a state government that allows corpses to stack up in the morgue, multinational corporations that move away and leave poisoned fields behind, judges who let violent criminals walk the streets, school stewards who steal the childrens milk money, elected officials who loot the city, automobile executives who couldnt manage a grocery store, or Wall Street grifters who destroyed the economy and left the nations children with a burden of debt? But McNeal messed upshe admits as much. 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. ], My baby, my baby, my baby. It's us but for your ears. As for the struggles of a generation of living people, the murder of a hundred children, they ask me: Whats new in that?. Another cruiser with two officers responded as well. War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. Do a Google search for "Aiyana Jones" and you get just 42,200 results. He gives details of the way streets look like at night, and gives a captivating detail of girl's father suffering from insomnia. The fact is a police officer threw the flash grenade through the window of the house that landed on Aiyana's blanket . Inside, splayed on the floor underneath the rack of snack cakes near the register, was a black man in a pool of blood. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. She had already cleared a space on the other end of the mantel for Chaises urn. When I moved back to Detroit two years ago, I profiled a firehouse on the East Side. On January 28, 2015, a prosecutor cleared Weekley of the last remaining charge against him, ensuring there would not be a third trial. The fire department is little better. What the fuck do you think? he said. Grover 08:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC) Reply . In Detroit, a new car costs more than the average house. He assigned the SWAT team the job of rounding up murder suspects, a task that had previously been done by detectives. She arrived too late. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. It fired. Why would anyone move a gunshot victim, much less toss him in a car? Weekley said it was an accident and accused Jones of wrestling with his gun immediately as he entered the abode, causing the fatal shot. Gibson bonded out last January and actually showed up for his trial in circuit court on February 17. Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones, was close by. 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. 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?. We believe some of them were struck by friendly fire, the high-ranking cop told me. 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. His eyes and mouth were open and held that milky expression of a drunk who has fallen asleep with his eyes open. The streetlights still go on and off. Robert Bobb was hired in 2009 as the emergency financial manager and given sweeping powers to balance the books. Even the beavers have returned.The daughter of an autoworker and a home nurse, McNeal grew up in the promise of the black middle class that Detroit once offered. This is not about policing, he said. The police were searching for a murder suspect thought to be in the Jones home. 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. It would also help inspire the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movementthree years later. But Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally shot Aiyana in the head, killing her. The raid took place at about 12:30 a.m. I get no sleep. Lawsuits claim it wrecked their teeth. 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. The judge said she's willing to be the "scapegoat" if critics don't like the result. Evans drivera copgave chase. He failed to report. She waited, but Sharpton never came. As our Detroit reporter, she is helping us expand our coverage of the economy, politics, and culture in and around the city of Detroit. Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. "[42][43] They turned on the lights and saw that she had been shot.. In a photograph from May 2010, Dominika Stanley and Charles Jones hold a picture of their daughter, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, in a Detroit courtroom. Then, realizing that sounded implausible, they said shed brushed the gun as she ran past the door. 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. Until there wasnt. The police were . After the grandmother's outburst, the judge ordered the jury out of the room and the grandmother was escorted from the court room screaming. Im alive. I am sick. But the grandmother says she was lying on the far side of the couch, away from the door. Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley in court in Detroit, Mich. on June 18, 2013 during his first trial. His brother stood over the dead man, a pistol in his hand, keeping an eye on the door in case someone walked in wanting to settle things. Weekley left the courtroom through a private door. First published on January 30, 2015 / 4:13 PM. A good kid with average grades, JeRean went to Southeastern High, which is situated in an industrial belt of moldering Chrysler assembly plants. Listen on Apple Podcasts. [32][33] Allison Howard was sentenced to two years of probation in July 2013, and fined $2,000. About 350 people are murdered each year in Detroit. Police report that they arrested the suspect at the duplex where the . 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. 2:45 Detroit Charles Jones, whose role in a high school student's 2010 slaying helped spark the police raid that ended with the officer-involved shooting death of his 7-year-old daughter. What the hell you doing up here for? Legal name. Even if you check the TT's of each city Aiyana is nowhere to . She was only a baby, man. Nevertheless, Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans issued a statement May 18. Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. Aiyana was killed when police raided a house to capture a murder suspect. Then they said he ran out the back of the house, even though there is no back door. [12][17][18] Officer Weekley claimed that the flash grenade subsequently blinded his view of the person on the couch in the living room. [12], According to press reports, police were on the scene by 12:40a.m. on Sunday, May 16, 2010. When I called the head of the homicide bureau and explained the situation, he told me, Oh yeah? His work has appeared in Time, Life, and Newsweek. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commandowhod been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWATburst into the house. It was Jameson who finally dragged Huff out of the house and gave him CPR in the driveway, across the street from the Boys & Girls Club. What occurred next has been disputed by police officers, bystanders, and neighboring residents. A retrial began on September 23, 2014 but on October 3, 2014, it was declared a mistrial after a second jury deadlocked on a verdict. [52], A civil rights lawsuit questioned Weekley's account of the incident, claiming the grenade had gone through the window and struck Aiyana. Its too late.. 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. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder. I dont want no apology from no police. "It bothers them," she said. Thats five times as many as New York, in a city one-tenth the size. Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do. Both trials ended with hung juries. He caught a lunch lady stealing the childrens milk money. [12] Weekley had been featured on another A&E police reality show, Detroit SWAT.
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