In the early hours of May 16, 2010, seven-year-old Aiyana MoNay Stanley-Jones, an African American girl, was asleep on the living room couch in her family's Detroit home. Her life was cut short when a Detroit Police Special Response Team, executing a raid, threw a flash grenade through the window and burst in. The raid, which was being filmed for the reality TV show 'The First 48,' was in search of a murder suspect believed to be in the building.
In the ensuing chaos, Aiyana was struck in the neck by a single bullet and killed.
The officer who fired the fatal shot was Joseph Weekley. His account of the incident was that Aiyana's paternal grandmother, Mertilla Jones, who was also in the room, had struggled with him, causing his submachine gun to discharge accidentally. Mertilla Jones vehemently denied this, stating that she had reached for her granddaughter after the flash grenade set the child's blanket on fire and made no contact with the officer. Later investigations found no evidence of her fingerprints on Weekley's firearm.
The target of the raid, Chauncey Owens, was the boyfriend of Aiyana's aunt and was wanted in connection with the murder of a 17-year-old named Je'rean Blake a few days prior. He was found in the apartment upstairs from Aiyana's and surrendered without incident. Owens was later convicted of Blake's murder and sentenced to life in prison. Aiyana's father, Charles Jones, was also implicated in the crime that led to the raid; he was convicted of second-degree murder for providing Owens with the gun used in Blake's killing.
In October 2011, Officer Joseph Weekley was charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun for Aiyana's death. His first trial in June 2013 ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict. A second trial began in September 2014, during which the judge dismissed the more serious involuntary manslaughter charge. This trial also ended in a mistrial in October 2014. In January 2015, prosecutors announced they would not seek a third trial and dropped the remaining misdemeanor charge of reckless use of a firearm against Weekley, ending the criminal case against him. Nearly a decade after her death, in April 2019, the city of Detroit reached an $8.25 million settlement with Aiyana Stanley-Jones's family.
