Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. Lyvonne Cargill wears a shirt that honors her son, JeRean Blake Nobles. . Was it death by TV? Can she be blamed for that? Then came the homicide-by-cop of little Aiyana. Evans told me then that major crimes were routinely underreported by 20 percent. They want to blame her parents and her aunt who is engaged to the murder suspect. Im trying to find him, Sheffield complained. "Aiyana's death was a tragic loss for her family and has been a heavy burden on our community. Within seconds, Weekleyfired hisMP5 rifle, killingAiyana, who was sleeping on the living room couch with her grandmother Mertilla Jones. Other auto plants sprang up on the East Side: Packard, Studebaker, Chryslers Dodge Main. 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. The raid happened early Sunday morning. Inside, splayed on the floor underneath the rack of snack cakes near the register, was a black man in a pool of blood. Police fired a flash grenade through the front window. Cargill said because of COVID-19 restrictions, she was unable to attend Jones' parole hearings to contest his release. War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. When I moved back to Detroit two years ago, I profiled a firehouse on the East Side. They drove her there every morning, five miles. The landlord of the duplex, Edward Taylor, let me into the Jones apartment. David Corn, Noah Lanard, and Dan Friedman. He won't be in the field. [2], After the shot was fired, Weekley reported to his sergeant that a woman inside had grabbed for his gun. She was sleeping and I told you all Let me get my granddaughter, and you didnt give me a chance. In Michigan, the designation for homicide is actually 750.316 (PDF), but thats just a mouthful of detail. One ran off. The madness has to stop, he said. In 2019, Jones' family agreed to an $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement against the city of Detroit in connection with the raid. The city reached a peak population of 1.9 million people in the 1950s, and it was 83 percent white. Jarrette Jones and Iyanna McNeely. He came here for publicity. I called the fire department to ask for its statistics. Devils Night is no longer the big deal it used to be, topping out last year at around 65 arsons. Weekley left the courtroom through a private door. Clutching his juice in one hand and two dollars in the other, JeRean staggered across Mack Avenue and collapsed in the street. Hes from New York. I saw the tape and wrote about its existence after the killing of Aiyana, but the story went nowhere until two months later, when someone in City Hall leaked a copy to the local ABC affiliate. [5] 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. Judge Hathaway emphasized that two juries, in 2013 and 2014, couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. The Rev. On May 14, 2010, Jones handed a .357 magnum pistol to his friend Chauncey Owens, who gunned down Cargill's son, 17-year-old Je'Rean Blake, outside the Motor City Marketplace on Mack at St. Jean on Detroit's east side. . That factory closed in 1956 and was left to rot, pulling down the East Side, which pulled down the city. People taking advanage of my benevolence. What occurred next has been disputed by police officers, bystanders, and neighboring residents. Aiyana was severely burned and then shot in the head and neck by an unidentified police officer standing on the porch. But it was dark. 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. Ive seen him in the faces of soldiers when I was covering the Iraq War. I began to get calls from reporters around the world wondering what Detroit was like, what was happening here. That tape never aired, but it was used as evidence in Weekleys two trials for Aiyanas death. What happened after that is a matter of conjecture, as Detroit officials have had problems getting their stories straight. AIYANA WAS LAID TO REST six days after her killing. In the witness box in September, Jones said: Im laying there screaming, asking someone to help my granddaughter because he shot her in the head. [38] He looked at Chauncey Owens the wrong way, detectives say. His body was transferred to Dr. Schmidt and the Wayne County morgue. [56] A spokesman for city police demanded that Fieger share the tape's contents with Michigan State Police investigators. But our ammos so bad, we cant do ballistics testing. Which is what he was doing at this house, authorities contend, when he put three bullets in Officer Huffs face. WHat actually happened to this little girl? If that isnt a record for any major metropolis, it is certainly a record for Detroit. Another cruiser with two officers responded as well. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal . Parts of the Detroit River are now clean enough for swimming. By police incompetence? 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. You will count 34 churches, a dozen liquor stores, six beauty salons and barber shops, a funeral parlor, a sprawling Chrysler engine and assembly complex working at less than half-capacity, and three dollar storesbut no grocery stores. His seven-year-old daughter, Aiyana Mo'nay Stanley-Jones (PDF), slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. The kids are dropping like flies and hes got nothing but useless words., CHECK OUT A SLIDESHOW OF ABANDONED HOUSES ON ONE BLOCK IN DETROIT, join us with a tax-deductible donation today. For instance, in 2008 a man was shot in the head. He was shot in the head and killed last year. We believe some of them were struck by friendly fire, the high-ranking cop told me. Sherrors mom, in white, lost another son to a bullet the previous year. But he doesnt return my calls. It was all for the cameras. There are no fewer than two TV dramas, two documentaries, and three reality programs being filmed here. An investigation was promised. . The victim, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, was shot in the head while she slept on a couch in May 2010. Forbidden by restrictive real estate covenants and racist custom, the blacks were mostly restricted to Paradise Valley, which ran the length of Woodward Avenue. In August 2014, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison on four counts, including false imprisonment and felony cruelty to children. [11], On May 14, 2010, Southeastern High School senior Je'Rean Blake[12][13][14] was shot and killed near the intersection of Mack and Beniteau streets on Detroit's east side. 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. 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. [65][unreliable source?] Blame the Federal Reserve. After the fatal shooting, the video concludes with a message dedicated to Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a 7-year-old girl who was shot and killed during a police raid on her house in Detroit back in. 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. 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. Both sons now sit in urns on her mantel.Chaise lived on the other side of the Chrysler complex. May 16, 2010, 7-year-old Aiyana was asleep on her couch, wrapped in her Hannah Montana blanket. The appellatecourt ruledthe presiding judge in Jones'case hadn'tadequately answered jurors' questionsduring deliberations. Weekley still is charged with careless discharge of a firearm causing death in the May 2010 shooting, which happened as police executed a search warrant for a murder suspect. But police officials have refused to discuss how one got shot in the foot. On October 4, 2011, a Wayne County grand jury indicted Officer Joseph Weekley for involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. An Arab family owned the store, and one of the menthe one with the pocked face and loud voicewas talking on the telephone, but I remember no sounds. The Rust Belt. 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. Not even you.. 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. She had already cleared a space on the other end of the mantel for Chaises urn. Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation. Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, 7, died May 16, 2010 after being shot by an officer during a police raid in Detroit. Police caught him again in November 2009 in possession of a handgun stolen from an Ohio cop. But JeRean never went to prom, much less the Afghanistan theater, because he couldnt clear the killing fields of Detroit. "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. Even Time bought a house on the East Side last year for $99,000. Of course I would. Jones pleaded guilty tosecond-degree murder and was sentenced to40-60 years, although in 2017 the Michigan Court of Appeals granted him a new trial. Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. 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. In tow was an A&E crew filming an episode of The First 48, its true-crime program. The water in the Detroit River was so bad, it was said you could bottle it and sell it as poison. Scott said a civil suit had been filed and an appeal made to US attorney general Eric Holder to pursue a case for the violation of Aiyanas civil rights. [12] She was one of three children of the couple and had four halfsiblings. 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. I know society looks at a person like me and wants me to go away, she said. Im alive. ME Schmidt ruled it a homicide; the police decided it was a suicide. They were conducting a police raid in search of a. Jones does not have a release date identified, although he could be freed as early as Thursday, Gautz said. I lingered a moment, backing out while taking it in: the bracelet, the liquor, the blood, the gun, the Ho-Hos, the cheapness of it all. This has helped reinforce a culture shift within police departments. At the time Owens was the boyfriend of Joness aunt LaKrystal Sanders, who was also living at the house. 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 . Owens was convicted of first-degree murderand sentenced to life in prison. 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. Chief Evans might have survived it all, had he, too, not been drawn to the lights of Hollywood. People are drinking. It was unlocked. Its easy in our anger, our rage, to just vent and scream. 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. Evans drivera copgave chase. A few minutes after that, JeReans mother, Lyvonne Cargill, arrived and got behind the wheel of the car that friends had dragged him into. Thats a hell of a pair of bookends, I offered. As for the struggles of a generation of living people, the murder of a hundred children, they ask me: Whats new in that?. A wary Detroit police officer keeps watch over an unruly crowd after an arrest on the East Side.The judge, Cynthia Gray Hathaway, set his bond at $20,000only 10 percent of which was due upfrontand adjourned the trial without explanation, according to the docket. 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. Ridden & quot ; neighborhood for her family and has been a heavy on. 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