In the tumultuous summer of 1967 in Detroit, Michigan, a young life was tragically cut short amidst the chaos of what would become known as the 12th Street Riot. Four-year-old Tanya Lynn Blanding, an African American girl, was inside her family's second-floor apartment at the corner of 12th Street and Euclid on the night of July 25th. The city was a landscape of unrest, with fires burning and the sounds of sirens and gunfire filling the air.
It was against this backdrop of fear and violence that Tanya's life would be extinguished in an instant.
Outside her building, a unit of the Michigan National Guard was stationed, on high alert for sniper fire which had been reported throughout the city. A flicker of light from the Blanding's apartment, later believed to have been her father or uncle lighting a cigarette, was tragically mistaken for the muzzle flash of a sniper's rifle. In response to this perceived threat, a National Guard Sergeant, Mortimer J. LaBlanc, unleashed a burst of fire from a. 50-caliber machine gun mounted on his tank, directing the deadly barrage into the apartment building.
The heavy rounds tore through the walls of the Blanding home, and one of them struck young Tanya, killing her. In the aftermath, investigations by both the National Guard and the Detroit Police Department's Homicide Bureau would place the blame for the shooting on the supposed sniper fire from the building. The act of lighting a cigarette was cited as a violation of orders for residents to maintain a complete blackout.
Ultimately, Tanya Blanding's death was ruled a 'justifiable' homicide. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office declined to press charges against Sergeant LaBlanc, citing the tense and volatile situation the National Guardsmen were facing. No arrests were ever made in connection with the death of the four-year-old girl, whose funeral was attended by around 200 mourners, a somber gathering in a city scarred by days of violence.
