Associated Press:
by: COREY WILLIAMS and ED WHITE
DETROIT — A lawyer for the family of a slain 7-year-old Detroit girl has filed two lawsuits related to a weekend raid that led to her shooting death.
A federal lawsuit claims police violated Aiyana Jones’ constitutional rights and
seeks an unspecified cash award of more than $75,000. A four-count suit filed in state court seeks damages in excess of $25,000. Both lawsuits were filed Tuesday.
Lawyer Geoffrey Fieger says Detroit police had no legitimate reason to throw a flash grenade into the home of Aiyana Jones early Sunday. He says she was burned by the explosive and struck by a police bullet shot from outside the home.
Police claim the girl was shot by an officer’s gun that mistakenly discharged inside
the house after they arrived to arrest a murder suspect.
Camera crew tagging along with officers may have footage from raid.
Events leading up to the shooting death may have been videotaped by a crime-reality series camera crew that was with police as they searched a family home for a homicide suspect.
What’s on the video could reveal whether Aiyana was fatally shot by an officer whose gun mistakenly discharged inside the house, as police say, or if claims of a “cover up” by Fieger are true.
Police have said officers threw a flash grenade through the first-floor window of the
two-family home early Sunday and that an officer’s gun discharged during a struggle or after a collision with the girl’s grandmother. The crew for the A&E series “The First
48″ was with police during the weekend raid.
Fieger said he has seen video of the siege and that the police account was full of
“utter fabrications.” He said a video shows an officer lobbing the grenade and then
shooting into the home from the porch. He would not say if the footage he saw was from the A&E crew.
“There is no question about what happened because it’s in the videotape,” Fieger
said Monday. “It’s not an accident. It’s not a mistake. There was no altercation.”
