Say her name: Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley Jones.

This is the story of Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley Jones.

Aiyana was an African-American girl born on July 20, 2002, in Detroit, Michigan. On the night of May 16, 2010, she was in Detroit, asleep on the couch with her grandmother right beside her watching television.

That night, there was a special response team filming a show called The First 48. The objective of the show is to give an insider-look at homicide investigations, focusing on the first 48 hours of the case. They were filming an episode around a 17-year-old high school student who was killed at a convenience store in the area.  An informant gave an address that they excepted would lead the officers to Chauncy Owens who was the suspect of the student’s murder. So the officers got a search warrant to allow them to enter the house. Little did they know that they were creating a tragic story and an innocent little girl would be killed.

When the response team got to the scene, the excitement of solving the case overshadowed the urge to follow protocols. The officers threw a grenade through the window which landed by Aiyana’s blanket and caused her blanket to burn. Officer Joseph Weekly, the lead commando, charged into the house and shot a single bullet that struck Aiyana’s head and exited her neck. He later claims that it was because the grandmother by the name of Mertilla reached for a gun. The officers did not realize that they entered the wrong unit and they were supposed to go to the upper unit and not the lower unit.

Mertilla Jones had to spend a night in jail because of Weekly’s claims which she says was false and that she reached for Aiyana when the chaos occurred.

Weekly was charged with manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. In June of 2013, his first trial ended with a mistrial, and a retrial was held in September of 2014 that ended with his manslaughter charge being dismissed, leaving him with only reckless endangerment with a firearm. But that trial ended with a mistrial in October and in January 2015 a prosecutor cleared Weekly from all charges remaining, and allowed him to go free.

It’s a tragic story and Aiyana would’ve been 18 years old today. On June 4, 2013, J Cole released a song titled crooked smile dedicated to Aiyana.

https://youtu.be/fzzMOMkjm8A