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 fire department is little better. The team, which had received intelligence that at least one rifle was in the house,wasaccompanied by a crew from the cable TV show, "First 48.". But according to a witness, he said nothing. [12] She was one of three children of the couple and had four halfsiblings. 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. Mertilla Jones was held overnight by Detroit police and then released. "He has completed various programming and is active in vocational training. Sharpton left and the Rev. Police arrested Mertilla, administered tests for drugs and gunpowder, and released her Sunday morning. 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. Sherrors was killed by a stray bullet while cutting a friends hair on a front porch just 27 days after JeRean died. They were conducting a police raid in search of a murder suspect who lived at that address -- and being filmed for a reality TV show in the process -- when Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally fired his gun. Look at the Trending Topics on Twitter. A fresh trial was scheduled for December 2013,[29] but actually began in September 2014. The raid took place at about 12:30 a.m. She had already cleared a space on the other end of the mantel for Chaises urn. 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. Dont bother locking 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. IT MIGHT BE a stretch to see anything more than Detroits problems in Detroits problems. I get no sleep. Its about state-sanctioned violence., US police departments are increasingly militarised, finds report, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Inside the lower unit of a duplex halfway down the gloomy street, Charles Jones, 25, was pacing, unable to sleep. The smell was beastly. David Corn, Noah Lanard, and Dan Friedman. The sad and confusing circumstances of the murders of JeRean Blake and Officer Huff, both black, robbed Sharpton of some of his customary indignation. Huff and his partner were not actually called to the scene; theyd taken it upon themselves to assist the younger cops, according to the police version of events. Soon, the air was the color of a filthy dishrag. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. "I want to say to the entire Jones family, Aiyana's loved ones and friends, how terribly sorry I am for your loss. We hope this resolution will provide everyone involved a measure of closure," Detroit Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia said in a statement, according to the Detroit News. The service was held at Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit, a drab cake-shaped megachurch near the Chrysler Freeway. Instead of being protected, communities are treated like the enemy, the report found with a disproportionate effect on communities of color. 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. Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley is accused of fatally shooting Aiyana during the raid that targeted a murder suspect. Then Huff got killed. I was allowed to meet with Charles Jones the following morning at Fiegers office, but with the caveat that I could only ask him questions about the evening his daughter was killed. By 1958, 20 percent of the Detroit workforce was jobless. Three ISO members describe what happened when a neo-Nazi . Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley Jones (July 20, 2002 - May 16, 2010), was a seven-year-old girl from the East Side of Detroit, Michigan who was shot and killed during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team on May 16, 2010. Owens didn't like the way the Southeastern High School teen had looked at him, according to court testimony. God, dont take my baby.. Would you take a job at that Chrysler plant if there were any jobs there? I asked one of the men, who was sweating under the weight of the cast iron. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands. Stanley suddenly emerged from her stupor: Whats that got to do with it? she hissed. But defense attorney Steve Fishman says Jones has no credibility because she's told different stories about what happened. 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 as defendants. . Assistant prosecutor Rob Moran told the judge that the misdemeanor was being dropped in the "best interests of justice." Once at Aiyanas graveside, Charles Jones released a dove. And now that the papers do cover Detroit, boosters complain about a lack of balance. 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. That house, too, is on the citys East Side, a nondescript brick duplex with a crumbling garage whose driveway funnels into busy Schoenherr Road. Then they said he ran out the back of the house, even though there is no back door. (And that statistic is true; I checked.). Nor is corruption a black or liberal thing. The beavers disappeared from the river around 1930. People taking advanage of my benevolence. People are awake. Legal name. Jones was born on July 20, 2002, to Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley in Detroit, Michigan. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. I am sick as hell. During the second trial, Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway dismissed the most serious charge, involuntary manslaughter, saying there was insufficient evidence. 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. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. But even he couldnt stanch the tsunami of red ink; the deficit ballooned more than $140 million under his guidance. From all indications it appears that police operation were flawed and heavily influenced by camera crews who were filming the raid for A&E's crime show "The First 48," according to a published report. [38] Tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands. Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones, was close by. and Weekley for the unlawful use of excessive force. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was 7 years old when she was killed by a single bullet to the head. 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 floor above Jones' on May 16, 2010. Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. Murder suspect Chauncey Louis Owens, the target of the raid, will be charged. In Detroit, the official response time of an ambulance to a 911 call is 12 minutes. Police caught him again in November 2009 in possession of a handgun stolen from an Ohio cop. AP Photo Charles Jones, the father of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was killed early Sunday in Detroit, holds a photo of Aiyana in attorney Geoffrey Fieger's office in Southfield, Mich., Tuesday . Weekley claimed Aiyana Jones' paternal grandmother, Mertilla Jones, attempted to slap his MP5 submachine gun, causing it to fire. People are drinking. [12], According to press reports, police were on the scene by 12:40a.m. on Sunday, May 16, 2010. This dental device was sold to fix patients' jaws. Not all of us are blessed.. 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. Aiyana was killed when police raided a house to capture a murder suspect. [51] She was buried on the grounds. 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. Short answer: Yesand no. 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. Some people are doomed from birth because their environment is so toxic.. European intellectuals wondered at the whirl of building and spending in the new America. She said she made no contact with any officers. 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. By police incompetence? People my mothers age like to tell me about Detroits good old days of soda fountains and shopping markets and lazy Saturday night drives. In October 2011, he was charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. They were restless and agitated and pulled at the collars of dress blues that didnt seem to fit. So what? Fieger barked. As for the struggles of a generation of living people, the murder of a hundred children, they ask me: Whats new in that?. But he doesnt return my calls. A seven-year-old Black girl was fatally during a raid in Detroit, Michigan Police Department in 2010. In a photograph from May 2010, Dominika Stanley and Charles Jones hold a picture of their daughter, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, in a Detroit courtroom. I went to see Fieger to ask him to show me the tape. Wage growth is slowing. In 2010 Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killed during a raid that was conducted by the Detroit, Michigan Police Department's Special Response Team. Its going to stop, he promised. In the end, Gibson was charged with Huffs murder and the attempted murders of four more officers. You know? These Wigs Install in Seconds. 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/. The store bell jingled its little requiem as I pulled the door open. Inexpensive, too! Aiyana Jones' step aunt Kayia White and step mom Dominique Simpson, right, sit on the front porch next to a blood spattered sofa in Detroit on . On January 28, 2015, a prosecutor cleared Weekley of the last remaining charge against him, ensuring there would not be a third trial. I began to get calls from reporters around the world wondering what Detroit was like, what was happening here. On October 10, the second trial ended in another mistrial. His retrial began in September 2014. About 350 people are murdered each year in Detroit. 2) NO WEAPONS OF ANY KIND WERE FOUND IN OR OUTSIDE THE HOME OF MERTILLA JONES after the police Special Response Team raid. Lord Jesus, I ain't never seen nothing like that in my life."--Mertilla Jones, Aiyana's grandmother. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. 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. Which is what he was doing at this house, authorities contend, when he put three bullets in Officer Huffs face. AIYANAS FAMILY retained Geoffrey Fieger, the flamboyant, brass-knuckled lawyer who represented Dr. Jack Kevorkiana.k.a. Why would anyone move a gunshot victim, much less toss him in a car? Her parents say they hope Aiyana will be remembered as more than a symbol of heightened tension in a city in crisis. The Kilpatrick scandal, combined with the murder rate, spurred the newly elected mayor, Dave Bingan NBA Hall of Famerto fire Police Chief James Barrens last year and replace him with Warren Evans, the Wayne County sheriff. As our Detroit reporter, she is helping us expand our coverage of the economy, politics, and culture in and around the city of Detroit. It also allowed a man to escape the smoldering city. Two years later he was sentenced to an additional 12 months for violating . A few minutes after that, JeReans mother, Lyvonne Cargill, arrived and got behind the wheel of the car that friends had dragged him into. Detroit has since made little progress on the federal consent decree. Or OUTSIDE the HOME of Mertilla Jones, attempted to slap his MP5 submachine gun causing! Department in 2010 actually began in September 2014 ink ; the deficit more. Like the way the Southeastern High School teen had looked at him, according court. 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