DETROIT — The family of a 7-year-old girl slain during a raid on their home filed state and federal lawsuits today against the police department, claiming police knew there were children in the home but conducted the raid with guns drawn anyway.
Geoffrey Fieger, the attorney for the family of Aiyana Jones, said Detroit police had no legitimate reason to throw a flash grenade into the home early Sunday. He said police, who were looking for a murder suspect, had the home under surveillance for hours.
“Certainly, they were aware children were living the home,” Fieger said at a news conference at his offices in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. He said the other children were ages 3 months, 2 and 4 years.
There were children’s toys strewn about the family’s front yard on Monday.
The federal lawsuit claims police violated Aiyana Jones’ constitutional rights and seeks an unspecified cash award of more than $75,000. A four-count lawsuit filed in state court seeks damages of more than $25,000. The amounts the family is seeking in both lawsuits are likely much higher.
Police said that officers threw a flash grenade through the first-floor window of the family’s home early Sunday, and that an officer’s gun discharged, killing the girl, during a confrontation inside the home with her grandmother. They later found the target of the raid, a 34-year-old man, in the apartment upstairs.
Fieger said that he viewed three or four minutes of video footage of the raid, and that it shows the officer fired into the home from the family’s porch after lobbing a flash grenade through a window. He said police are trying to cover up what happened.
Fieger declined to say what footage he viewed, but a camera crew for the A&E reality series “The First 48” captured footage of the raid, network spokesman Dan Silberman said. The spokesman declined to comment about the case and denied a request by The Associated Press to view the footage.
Aiyana’s cousin, Mark Robinson, said he was walking the family’s dogs when police grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
“I told them, ‘There are children in the house. There are children in the house,’” Robinson told reporters at the news conference today.
Michigan State Police are investigating.
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