Police Brutality / Individual record
Aiyana Stanley-Jones
Seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed by a Detroit police officer during a nighttime raid while she slept on a couch in May 2010.
- Record ID
- PB-041
- Incident date
- May 16, 2010
- Date of death
- May 16, 2010
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Detroit, MI
- Category
- Police raid shooting
What happened
Aiyana Stanley-Jones was sleeping in a Detroit home on May 16, 2010 when an elite police team entered during an operation to arrest a suspected killer. Officers threw a flash-bang device and moved through the door. Officer Joseph Weekley's gun fired, striking the child in the head. Weekley maintained that an adult inside grabbed his weapon; Aiyana's family sharply denied this account. A television crew filming a crime program was present outside during the operation. The killing sparked intense outrage about militarized tactics, the decision to raid an occupied family home and how officers responded to the presence of children. Her family pursued criminal accountability and civil litigation.
Investigation & findings
Weekley faced criminal proceedings, but two trials ended without a conviction; the remaining charge was dismissed in 2015. In 2019 Detroit agreed to an $8.25 million civil settlement with Aiyana's family.
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- Historical source-derived record, pre-2015
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Published historical compilation of Black people killed in police custody (1999–2014)SAGE journal / cited NAACP LDF memorial listing · 2016 · Secondary scholarly source