WASHTENAW COUNTY, Mich. – It’s been a little more than six months since the worst day of Larry and Kelly Jenuwine’s life.
Their son, 34-year-old John Jinuwine, was the man inside this van on Jan. 6 when it was peppered with 27 bullets following a police chase in Ypsilanti.
“John’s [35th] birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and my wife actually got him a birthday cake,” Larry said on Wednesday (June 10). “It’s been so unbelievably bad that it’s almost impossible to put it into words.”
The family filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department this morning.
John, who was unarmed, was shot seven times following a 32-minute police chase in the early morning hours of Jan. 6 in Ypsilanti.
“With his history of being in the service and a law-abiding citizen, it’s just crushed our family,” Larry said.
“He was the son every man wants.”
John grew up in St. Clair County. He played high school football and served 6 years in the U.S. Navy.
“We grew up in the country, you know, we had horses, he bailed hay, he loved to fish, he loved the hunt,” Larry said. “He was the son every man wants.”
“He took his service to the country very seriously,” Larry said. “He came out of that with more conviction and a greater sense of self in relation to law enforcement. He was a black-and-white individual. You were either in his circle of trust, or you weren’t.”
His parents credit their community and family as being their biggest support system following his death.
They still can’t figure out why he ran from the police that night, but they feel he didn’t deserve to die.
“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” Larry said. We also are very hopeful that [Michigan Attorney General] Dana Nessel will pursue criminal charges against these officers involved, but it needs to go further than that.
“27 shots”
It started when a 911 call came in at 1:24 a.m. on Jan. 6, and the caller, who identified himself as “Matt,” said he saw a large white van driving erratically in and out of traffic and through a gas station without license plates or headlights.
Surveillance footage shows a van racing past a different gas station.
At 1:30 a.m., a second call came in from a man who insisted the van’s driver pointed a weapon at his wife and that there were two Black males in the van.
Over the next 32 minutes, Sheriff’s Deputies chased the van through Ypsilanti. On four different occasions, the van stopped and aggressively backed up toward the deputies before pulling off without hitting them.
The chase ended in violence at 2:06 a.m., near Prospect and Towner.
One of the deputies hit a pit maneuver on the van, causing it to overturn on its side.
The deputies then poured out of their vehicles, with one of them almost immediately yelling the driver has a gun, despite no gun being visible in the video.
“There were so many decision points that if they had just made the right decision, it wouldn’t have happened,” Maura Battersby, the family’s attorney, said. “It wasn’t just the final pit maneuver; it wasn’t just them leaping out of their vehicles.
“It wasn’t just them letting him refusing to provide medical aid,” Battersby said. “There were many opportunities for them to acknowledge that this was not the van that they were looking for, that they were supposed to be looking for.”
The four deputies fired 27 shots into the van from all sides. The van remained flipped over for hours.
The driver, John, was quickly killed, and it was later revealed that he did not, in fact, have a weapon.
“Twenty-seven shots,” attorney Todd Flood said. His law firm, Flood Law, filed the suit. “They didn’t know who was in that van. God forbid that John had his family members in that van.”
“You’ll see the bullet holes going through the roof,” Flood said. “Your bullet holes go through the bottom. And then you see bullet holes going from the back end to the front end. God forbid, [the deputies] almost killed each other.”
John’s parents say it took nearly 18 hours to be notified of the shooting.
They feel the department, which has seen its fair share of controversy since Sheriff Alysia Dyer took over, has not been transparent with them from the start.
“Every interaction that we’ve had with Washington Sheriff’s Department, they have lied to us,” Kelly said. “There’s definitely no love lost there.”
“Through this whole thing, Sheriff Dyer never even took the two minutes it would take to call us,” Larry said. “She goes on TV like she’s all apologetic and everything, but, to me, if that was my crew, I would be the guy making the contact.”
The Sheriff’s Department had no comment on the suit, noting that an active criminal investigation into the incident is also ongoing.
They did say that the four officers involved in the shooting remain on administrative leave.
The criminal case has been submitted to the prosecutor’s office, and it is also under review by Nessel.
Prior to this, the Jenuwines were big supporters of law enforcement.
That outlook has drastically changed.
“My logical brain knows that 98 percent of cops are good people doing their jobs,” Larry said. “Now, every time I see a cop, I have to wonder, is that guy one of the 98 percent or is he one of 2% cowboys?”
“The trust factor is pretty much gone,” Kelly said. “Where it used to be way up here, now it’s way down here.”