They went hog wild. No one can answer that fully. / AP. As officer Joseph Weekley walks free, another community is demanding answers about the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. The civil rights lawsuit, which alleges officers attempted to cover-up how Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed, names Officer Joseph Weekley, Robert Rowe, the Detroit Police Department, and the city . Mertilla Jones was held overnight by Detroit police and then released. [37], Weekley's retrial started in September 2014. [12], According to press reports, police were on the scene by 12:40a.m. on Sunday, May 16, 2010. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. I get no sleep. Another cruiser with two officers responded as well. Officers deployeda "flash bang" grenadeand kicked in the front door, and raid team leader Joseph Weekley led the crewinto the house. I cant heal properly because of it. "[60], In September 2013, J. Cole published a music video dedicated to Jones for his song Crooked Smile, featuring TLC on YouTube. On Friday, Hathaway dismissed a lesser second charge, of reckless use of a firearm. Two trials against Officer Joseph Weekley ended without verdicts on a charge of reckless use of a gun. "It isn't the judge's decisions that caused these juries to not reach a decision," she said. Tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands. People taking advanage of my benevolence. "It's irking me so bad," Cargill said. And now that the papers do cover Detroit, boosters complain about a lack of balance. Its always like that. Police fired a flash grenade through the front window. Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. "[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. And Ive got to say in all my years in the department, Ive never used a flash-bang in a case like this.. 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. Thats five times as many as New York, in a city one-tenth the size. ], My baby, my baby, my baby. Detroit demolishes only 500 homes a year, thanks to concerns over lawsuits and environmental hazards, as well as lack of funds and ineptitude. Newspapers made little of ituntil the US Attorney revealed that the federal monitor of the decree was having an affair with the priapic mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was forced to resign, and now sits in prison convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. [16], Aiyana Jones was the daughter of Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley. The city grew to 1.3 million people from 300,000 after Ford opened his Model T factory. Owens didn't like the way the Southeastern High School teen had looked at him, according to court testimony. The bullet struck Aiyana killing her. Fieger alleged a police cover-up. The story rated three paragraphs in the daily papers, and the media never followed up. Much of the firefighters equipment was substandard: Their boots had holes; they were alerted to fires by fax from the central office. 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. A former risk manager for the district was indicted for siphoning off $3 million for personal use. Then came the homicide-by-cop of little Aiyana. This was the first raid on a house since his death. 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. The fact is a police officer threw the flash grenade through the window of the house that landed on Aiyana's blanket . 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. Aiyana Jones was a seven year old girl living in Detroit, who was killed by the police while sleeping in her own home. Outside, Television was watching them. 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. The store bell jingled its little requiem as I pulled the door open. Dont bother locking it. AS SUMMER DRAGGED on, the story of Aiyana faded from even the regional press. But McNeal messed upshe admits as much. 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. Owens was convicted of first-degree murderand sentenced to life in prison. As far-fetched as what happened to the Joneses may sound, they are not . One of the punks killed him claiming self-defense even though he had the gun and was the aggressor. Inside the lower unit of a duplex halfway down the gloomy street, Charles Jones, 25, was pacing, unable to sleep. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commandowhod been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWATburst into the house. 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. [6][7][8] On October 10, the judge declared a mistrial due to jury deadlock. The Rust Belt. Aiyana was killed when police raided a house to capture a murder suspect. She arrived too late. 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. Al Sharpton spoke her eulogy. Police officers came from Canada and across Michigan. There are lawyers and doctors and auto executives with nice homes and good jobs, community elders trying to make things better, teachers who spend their own money on classroom supplies, people who mow lawns out of respect for the dead, parents who raise their children, ministers who help with funeral expenses. They turned on the lights and saw that she had been shot.. Sarah Cwiek joined Michigan Radio in October 2009. [53] Two days after Jones's death, on May 18, 2010, attorney Geoffrey Fieger filed lawsuits on behalf of her family against A&E and the police. Soon, the air was the color of a filthy dishrag. His body was transferred to Dr. Schmidt and the Wayne County morgue. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder. 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. Impoverished communities such as Detroit, which is almost 83% black and has a poverty rate of 39%, have been on the receiving end of a decades-long war on drugs, which has made the US the country with the largest number of people behind bars, ahead of China and Russia. The Rev. Then, realizing that sounded implausible, they said shed brushed the gun as she ran past the door. [2] Her death drew national media attention[3] and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident. She was sleeping and I told you all Let me get my granddaughter, and you didnt give me a chance. A reality TV crew recorded the scene from the street. A thousand people attended, as did the predictable plump of media. He was shot in the head and killed last year. It went straight through the childs head. 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. 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 . January 7, 2022 . Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. It was a sweatbox, and I went across the street to the liquor store for a soda pop. [32][33] Allison Howard was sentenced to two years of probation in July 2013, and fined $2,000. Her parents say they hope Aiyana will be remembered as more than a symbol of heightened tension in a city in crisis. Jones was born on July 20, 2002, to Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley in Detroit. We believe some of them were struck by friendly fire, the high-ranking cop told me. As recently as this week, Fieger said in a press release, thatto date, theCity of Detroithas refused to participate in good faith in any resolution regarding Aiyana's death and continue to deny the family justice. Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones (July 20, 2002 - May 16, 2010) was a seven-year-old African-American girl from Detroit 's East Side who was shot in the neck and killed by police officer Joseph Weekley during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team targeting a suspect in the apartment a . [42] While Sanders was on the stand, Judge Cynthia Hathaway told her that she (Sanders) was being "disrespectful. A man called me once to say he had witnessed a murder, but the police refused to take his statement. Weekley's first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2013. Do a Google search for "Aiyana Jones" and you get just 42,200 results. Skyscrapers sprang up virtually overnight. Sherrors mom, in white, lost another son to a bullet the previous year. [50][bettersourceneeded] The casket was white and was afterwards driven to the grave by horse-drawn carriage. [2], After the shot was fired, Weekley reported to his sergeant that a woman inside had grabbed for his gun. Another son to a bullet the previous year for her death the Wayne County morgue grenadeand kicked in daily... Of the punks killed him claiming self-defense even though he had the gun and afterwards... 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