Aiyana’s family, group say more than a warrant due for fatal cop raid

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110305/METRO01/103050347/1409/Aiyana%E2%80%99s-family–group-say-more-than-a-warrant-due-for-fatal-cop-raid

Last Updated: March 05. 2011 1:00AM

Aiyana’s family, group say more than a warrant due for fatal cop raid

Doug Guthrie and Mike Wilkinson / The Detroit News

Detroit— The family of a 7-year-old girl killed by police last spring is outraged that only one person could be charged in the fatally flawed raid, saying the system failed Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

The girl was killed by a bullet from a police weapon while sleeping on a living room sofa early on May 16.

Officers were raiding her east side home in a search for a murder suspect.

Outside, as a camera crew from the A&E cable network show “The First 48” filmed, the Detroit Police Special Response Team broke a front window, tossed in a stun grenade, and Officer Joseph Weekley entered the house. A bullet from his gun killed the girl.

“I want justice for Aiyana — person to person, a trial for the person who did this to her,” the girl’s grandmother, Mertilla Jones, 48, said at a press conference Friday.

“Against all of them who did this to our family,” added her daughter and the girl’s aunt, LaKrystal Sanders.

Michigan State Police said Thursday that a 10-month investigation resulted in their request for a warrant against an unnamed male. No other details were revealed.

A decision on whether to charge that person and with what will be made after a review by Wayne County prosecutors. There is no timetable for a decision, according to prosecutor’s spokeswoman Maria Miller, who said the report “contains hundreds of pages … and a great deal of evidence.”

Mertilla Jones was taken into custody for 12 hours immediately after the incident and accused by police of causing the shooting by wrestling with Weekley over his gun. After her release, police said the shooting was a result of a collision between Weekley and the grandmother, who had been sleeping on the sofa next to the girl.

Lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, who represents the family in lawsuits against police and the TV show, has said a video recording shows Weekley fired his gun before entering the front door. Fieger has claimed police almost immediately launched a cover-up.

Friday, Mertilla Jones said she is angry that just one charge may be filed. She said no authorities have called to update the family on the investigation or its result.

She said doesn’t eat or sleep since the incident and has lost 50 pounds from what she called a minor stroke.

“People expect us to get over it,” she said. “You can’t put a time on getting over it. We’re all still grieving. I miss her.”

The women spoke Friday along with representatives of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality during a news conference at an east side social club. Group leader Ron Scott said two people should be charged — Weekley and the officer who threw the stun grenade — because both represent assaults. Scott said the Police Department has become “militarized.”

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan, also attended the conference and said Detroit Police have a “mindset that treats citizens as enemy combatants.”

Scott said the coalition intends to seek documents related to the investigation and wants answers to numerous questions, including who planned the raid, who gave the order to throw the grenade and who agreed to let the film crew go along.

“It was a production, a film production,” said Sandra Hines, a coalition member. “Their concern wasn’t police work; it was how they would look on ‘First 48.'”The television show was recording the department’s search for Chauncey Owens, a suspect in the murder of Je’Rean Blake Nobles, shot outside a nearby liquor store almost 48 hours earlier. Owens was captured without incident in a simultaneous raid on a separate residence upstairs. LaKrystal Sanders was Owens’ girlfriend. He is set for trial in April if he is ruled mentally fit in a competency hearing later this month.

 

DawudWalid

Dawud Walid is currently the Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI), which is a chapter of America's largest advocacy and civil liberties organization for American Muslims and is a member of the Michigan Muslim Community Council (MMCC) Imams Committee. Walid has been interviewed and quoted in approximately 150 media outlets ranging from the New York Times, Wall St Journal, National Public Radio, CNN, BBC, FOX News and Al-Jazeera. Furthermore, Walid was a political blogger for the Detroit News from January 2014 to January 2016, has had essays published in the 2012 book All-American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim, the 2014 book Qur'an in Conversation and was quoted as an expert in 13 additional books and academic dissertations. He was also a featured character in the 2013 HBO documentary "The Education of Mohammad Hussein." Walid has lectured at over 50 institutions of higher learning about Islam, interfaith dialogue and social justice including at Harvard University, DePaul University and the University of the Virgin Islands - St. Thomas and St. Croix campuses as well as spoken at the 2008 and 2011 Congressional Black Caucus Conventions alongside prominent speakers such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congressman Keith Ellison. In 2008, Walid delivered the closing benediction at the historic 52nd Michigan Electoral College in the Michigan State Senate chambers and gave the Baccalaureate speech for graduates of the prestigious Cranbrook-Kingswood Academy located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Walid was also a featured speaker at the 2009 and 2010 Malian Peace and Tolerance Conferences at the University of Bamako in Mali, West Africa. He has also given testimony at hearings and briefings in front of Michigan state legislators and U.S. congressional representatives, including speaking before members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington, D.C. Walid has studied under qualified scholars the disciplines of Arabic grammar and morphology, foundations of Islamic jurisprudence, sciences of the exegesis of the Qur’an, and Islamic history during the era of Prophet Muhammad through the governments of the first 5 caliphs. He previously served as an imam at Masjid Wali Muhammad in Detroit and the Bosnian American Islamic Center in Hamtramck, Michigan, and continues to deliver sermons and lectures at Islamic centers across the United States and Canada. Walid was a 2011 - 2012 fellow of the University of Southern California (USC) American Muslim Civil Leadership Institute (AMCLI) and a 2014 - 2015 fellow of the Wayne State Law School Detroit Action Equity Lab (DEAL). Walid served in the United States Navy under honorable conditions earning two United States Navy & Marine Corp Achievement medals while deployed abroad. He has also received awards of recognition from the city councils of Detroit and Hamtramck and from the Mayor of Lansing as well as a number of other religious and community organizations.

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