They made it to the trauma ward, where JeRean was pronounced dead. Jones and two other men known as Lil James and Dirt rode along for JeReans ass-whipping. [12], According to press reports, police were on the scene by 12:40a.m. on Sunday, May 16, 2010. The little girl in the video was based on a true story, according to MTV.com. Forget about it. 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. DETROITS EAST SIDE is now the poorest, most violent quarter of Americas poorest, most violent big city. Its easy in our anger, our rage, to just vent and scream. Chaises mother, Britta McNeal, 39, sat on the porch staring blankly into the distance, smoking no-brand cigarettes. 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. Killing of Aiyana Jones. Little Aiyana's death is heartbreaking! 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. Protestors pleaded for the termination of Officer Weekley as he had been selected to co-chair the Detroit Police Department's Committee on Race and Equality. Hes from New York. There are at least 50 corpses on hold in his morgue cooler, some unidentified, others whose next of kin are too poor to bury them. The day after Huff was killed, and under fire from the police for her leniency toward Gibson, Judge Hathaway went into the case file and made changes, according to notations made in the courts computerized docket system. He gave her $800 for funeral costs. A small crowd of agitated black people was gathered on the sidewalk. Im worried they went Hollywood, said a high-ranking Detroit police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigation and simmering resentment in the streets. The killing contributed to raising national awareness of the ongoing issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by police. 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. [49], Aiyana Jones' funeral was held in the Second Ebenezer Church on May 22, 2010 in Detroit. Weekley was the first officer to enter the home, seconds after a flashbang grenade a war device created by the British SAS in the 1960s to disorient with a blinding flash and a temporarily deafening noise was lobbed into it. He won't be in the field. At the prosecutors request, Hathaway dismissed the last charge against Joseph Weekley. [2], After the shot was fired, Weekley reported to his sergeant that a woman inside had grabbed for his gun. Like so many across the country, shes being evicted with no job and no place to go. About 350 people are murdered each year in Detroit. 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 gimmick was to have its reporters live there and chronicle the decline of the Motor City for one year. He failed to report. 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. Someone radioed in, and more police arrivedbut the official story of what happened that night has changed repeatedly. Grover 08:10, 10 June 2014 (UTC) Reply . Weekley will not go to a third trial. Legal name. She denied grabbing the weapon. 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. The smell was beastly. Then they said he jumped out a back window. The man stopped, turned, and pulled a gun. May 16, 2010, 7-year-old Aiyana was asleep on her couch, wrapped in her Hannah Montana blanket. Technicians are currently working on the problem. Wage growth is slowing. Dont bother locking it. The family of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was murdered by Detroit police more than two years ago, is still waiting for justice. 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. The posse allegedly included Aiyanas father, Charles C.J. Jones. The killing contributed to raising national awareness of the ongoing issue of young unarmed African Americans being killed by police. Instead of being protected, communities are treated like the enemy, the report found with a disproportionate effect on communities of color. I also found that the police and judicial systems were so broken that in more than 70 percent of murders, the killer got away with it. Huff entered with his gun still holstered. These girls are the lucky ones. 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. AIYANA WAS LAID TO REST six days after her killing. The camera crew was not inside the house when the girl was hit. He gives details of the way streets look like at night, and gives a captivating detail of girl's father suffering from insomnia. His retrial began in September 2014. But he doesnt return my calls. The streetlights still go on and off. Im alive. One ran off. It means uncertainty and abandonment and psychopathology. Shoddily equipped firemen face some 500 arsons a month.Detroit has been synonymous with arson since the 80s, when the city burst into flames in a pre-Halloween orgy of fire and destruction known as Devils Night. You might blame postwar industrial policies that sent the factories to the suburbs, the rural South, and the western deserts. On 16 May 2010, Aiyana was shot dead by Weekley in the middle of the night, as she slept on a sofa inside her home on the east side of Detroit. Soon, the air was the color of a filthy dishrag. Aiyana Jones was 7 when she was killed in a police raid. [12][17][18] Officer Weekley claimed that the flash grenade subsequently blinded his view of the person on the couch in the living room. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. 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. Still, as the American middle class collapses, its worth perhaps remembering that the East Side of Detroitthe place where Aiyana, JeRean, and Officer Huff all diedwas once its industrial cradle. Listen on Apple Podcasts. I went to visit Cargill, who lived just around the way. [41] 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. The raid happened early Sunday morning. 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. 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. JeRean knew badness was on its way and called his mother to come pick him up. A minute later, a friend took the two dollars as a keepsake. They threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of the lower unit and kicked open its wooden door, which was also unlocked. Do a Google search for "Aiyana Jones" and you get just 42,200 results. Aiyana was sleeping on the couch next to her grandmother when, just after midnight, Officer Weekley's SWAT team threw a flashbang grenade through the living room window, setting fire to . Fieger responded by saying he does not have the supposed video,[57] which he claims was made by the A&E Network reality show The First 48. Mayor Dave Bing spoke. On his desk is a bronze bust of Geoffrey Fieger. [20] He pushed his way inside, protected by a ballistic shield. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. Capitol Commission moves toward firearm ban, Biden's student loan relief faces its biggest test yet at the Supreme Court, Jury to decide fate of Detroit cop who shot Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Second trial begins for Detroit police officer who shot Aiyana Jones, Detroit officer faces misdemeanor charge in Aiyana Jones's death; jury deliberating. He admitted in his first trial that, "It's my gun that shot and killed a 7-year-old girl. Sharptons full of shit, said Cargill, a brassy 39-year-old who works as a stock clerk at Target. 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. Plus, grenades are rarely used when rounding up suspects, even murder suspects. Aiyana was severely burned and then shot in the head and neck by an unidentified police officer standing on the porch. The police have been working under a federal consent decree since a 2003 investigation found that detectives were locking up murder witnesses for days on end, without access to a lawyer, until they coughed up a name. 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. 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. Evans told me then that major crimes were routinely underreported by 20 percent. The crumbling houses still crumble. 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