. I cant heal properly because of it. Its too late.. Evans was fired. Almost half of all adults are illiterate.Duncan may lie awake, but many civic leaders appear to walk around with their eyes sealed shut. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? Take for instance the death of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was shot and killed during a police raid at their Detroit home. Detroit VA hospital harmed patients, altered records, investigation reveals, $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Until there wasnt. A good kid with average grades, JeRean went to Southeastern High, which is situated in an industrial belt of moldering Chrysler assembly plants. Evans driver dropped him with a single shot. Go. He wore a gold bracelet as thick as a gymnasium rope. It regards itself as the temple of a new gospel of progress, to which I shall venture to give the name of Detroitism.. [12] At the time of the incident Aiyana Jones was asleep on the couch in front room of the downstairs apartment. McNeal wondered how she was going to pay the $3,000 for her sons funeral. Mertilla Jones was held overnight by Detroit police and then released. It would also help inspire the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movementthree years later. I dont want no apology from no police. The official version was that two men were walking in the middle of a street on the East Side when Evans and his driver told them to walk on the sidewalk. But even he couldnt stanch the tsunami of red ink; the deficit ballooned more than $140 million under his guidance. When I moved back to Detroit two years ago, I profiled a firehouse on the East Side. That year, the police said there were 306 homicidesuntil I began digging. What occurred next has been disputed by police officers, bystanders, and neighboring residents. The blood was congealing into a pancake on the dirty linoleum. The radio was tuned to NPR and A Prairie Home Companion came warbling out of my speakers. Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation. The entire botched nighttime raid was captured on camera by crews from the A&E show The First 48. People taking advanage of my benevolence. [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. Some people are doomed from birth because their environment is so toxic.. Suddenly, Detroit was historic, symbolichip, even. 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. As a reporter, Ive worked from New York to St. Louis to Los Angeles, and Detroit is the only big city I know of that doesnt put out a crime blotter tracking the days mayhem. 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. [16], Aiyana Jones was the daughter of Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley. The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. 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. [19], Police officers, bystanders, and residents of the home disagreed about the events that followed. On the morning of May 16, a Detroit police officer fatally shot 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in the throat during a police raid on her home. Then there is the thought that Detroit is simply a boomtown that went bust the minute Henry Ford began to build it. 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. His partner took the rear entrance. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. I need help. Weekley insisted he accidentally pulled the trigger during a struggle with Aiyana's grandmother. 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. I asked Fieger if Charles Jones should accept some culpability in his daughters death, considering his alleged role in JeReans murder, the stolen cars found in his backyard, and the fact that his daughter slept on the couch next to an unlocked door. Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. I went to see Fieger to ask him to show me the tape. It feels like there aint no love no more.. I stared through the windshield at the little boy in the diaper playing amid the ruins, reached over, and switched it off. Both sons now sit in urns on her mantel.Chaise lived on the other side of the Chrysler complex. The Rev. For community members and advocates, the bigger question is why a Swat team was deployed in the first place. The frightened black man attempted to save himself. In August 2014, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison on four counts, including false imprisonment and felony cruelty to children. Aiyanas death garnered national attention, including sharp criticism from the Revs. Parts of the Detroit River are now clean enough for swimming. But when you call for help, it seems like no ones there. Do a Google search for "Aiyana Jones" and you get just 42,200 results. But police officials have refused to discuss how one got shot in the foot. 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. Its about state-sanctioned violence., US police departments are increasingly militarised, finds report, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. 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. Behind him stood two rookies. 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. In Detroit, a new car costs more than the average house. A bunch of lazy, uneducated blue-collar incompetents. This has helped reinforce a culture shift within police departments. "[27] His trial was scheduled for October[28] and finally took place in June 2013 but resulted in a deadlocked jury. The story rated three paragraphs in the daily papers, and the media never followed up. A spokesman for the A &E program "The First 48" tells ABC News they had a camera crew along with the Detroit police when Aiyanna Jones was shot and killed during the execution of a search warrant to find a man wanted in connection with a murder. It's us but for your ears. 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. Jones does not have a release date identified, although he could be freed as early as Thursday, Gautz said. [61][62][63], In May 2016, BlackMattersUS[64][unreliable source?] Like so many across the country, shes being evicted with no job and no place to go. Jones was arrested, and though she was quickly released it was not before she and two other family members Aiyanas parents had been forced to sit in their childs blood for hours, Scott said. What does the science say about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic? Predictably, Gibson did not show for his new court date. When I was a teenager, my mother owned a struggling little flower shop on the East Side, not far from where Aiyana was killed. Assistant prosecutor Rob Moran told the judge that the misdemeanor was being dropped in the "best interests of justice." 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. "Aiyana's death was a tragic loss for her family and has been a heavy burden on our community. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, pictured in family photograph. 20072023 Blackpast.org. The city provided clothing, fuel, rent, and $10 every week to adults for food; children got $5. There are no fewer than two TV dramas, two documentaries, and three reality programs being filmed here. 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. 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. Owens, a habitual criminal, was arrested upstairs minutes after Aiyanas shooting and charged for the slaying of JeRean. To avoid the embarrassment of being the nations perpetual murder capital, the police department took to cooking the homicide statistics, reclassifying murders as other crimes or incidents. Home. Evans brought a refreshing honesty to a department plagued by ineptitude and secrecy. Young Municipal Center in Detroit. They were conducting a police raid in search of a. [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. I get no sleep. In October 2011, he was charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. He admitted in his first trial that, "It's my gun that shot and killed a 7-year-old girl. [59], On April 2, 2015, nearly five years following Jones's death, Officer Weekley was returned to active duty as a Detroit police officer. He came here for publicity. He was charged twice with involuntary manslaughter, but both cases ended in mistrials. [52], A civil rights lawsuit questioned Weekley's account of the incident, claiming the grenade had gone through the window and struck Aiyana. Grover 08:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC) Reply . It was 12:40 am on Sunday, May 16, 2010. [48] On January 28, 2015, county prosecutor Kym Worthy dismissed the last remaining charge against Weekley, the misdemeanor of 'careless discharge of a firearm causing death'. Her body was transferred to the Wayne County morgue. As for the videotape of the killing, Geoffrey Fieger said he did not have it. He had been married eight years and had three daughters and a stepson. An investigation was promised. Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley stands in judge Cynthia Hathaways courtroom in Detroit, in June 2013. I get no sleep. 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. Was Aiyana's legal last name "Jones", "Stanley Jones", or "Stanley-Jones"? IT MIGHT BE a stretch to see anything more than Detroits problems in Detroits problems. The psychopathology of growing up in Detroit, he said. 2023 www.detroitnews.com. It also allowed a man to escape the smoldering city. And Ive got to say in all my years in the department, Ive never used a flash-bang in a case like this.. May 16, 2010, 7-year-old Aiyana was asleep on her couch, wrapped in her Hannah Montana blanket. The family of a 7-year-old girl who was fatally shot during a May 2010 police raid is suing the Detroit officer involved in the incident, Detroit News reports.. Forget about it. Bagpipes played and the rain fell. In this shit, a one-year-old played next door, barefoot. This could be a precedent setting case if the Court . But there is no money; the struggling school system has a $363 million deficit. He caught a lunch lady stealing the childrens milk money. what happened to aiyana jones. Why you do this to me? Fiegers suburban office is a shrine to Geoffrey Fieger. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was shot and killed in her sleep by a bullet from Joseph Weekley's gun during the A&E filmed documented raid was laid to rest at the Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit on May 22, 2010. 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. Aiyana Jones was a seven year old girl living in Detroit, who was killed by the police while sleeping in her own home. The house next door to his is rubble smelling of burnt pine, pissed on by the spray cans of the East Warren Crips. The streetlights still go on and off. So what? Fieger barked. Two years later he was sentenced to an additional 12 months for violating . In the process, the gun belonging to police officer Joseph Weekley . Im stuck. Sarah Cwiek joined Michigan Radio in October 2009. 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. War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. 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. Owens was convicted of first-degree murderand sentenced to life in prison. Word of the free milk and honey made its way down South, and the poor Negros and hillbillies flooded in. It was a sweatbox, and I went across the street to the liquor store for a soda pop. Murder suspect Chauncey Louis Owens, the target of the raid, will be charged. Then they said he jumped out a back window. The city reached a peak population of 1.9 million people in the 1950s, and it was 83 percent white. Its police disinformation.. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. The raid happened early Sunday morning. A reality TV crew recorded the scene from the street. The lawsuit charges Rowe[who?] Someone radioed in, and more police arrivedbut the official story of what happened that night has changed repeatedly. 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. A total, unfortunate fuck-up.. 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.. 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. If youre a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.. The flashbacks. 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. The beavers disappeared from the river around 1930. They made it to the trauma ward, where JeRean was pronounced dead. They went hog wild. 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. Short answer: Yesand no. 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 . Its easy in our anger, our rage, to just vent and scream. 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