Father Kills Son -

There are so many ways to view this. But I am none too pleased with the mother for having kids by different men. The age differences is startling. And son confesses he needs help and the man who made him kills him, but where was he for the raising?

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Dad arraigned in son's killing; mom says she sought help for teen


BY TAMMY STABLES BATTAGLIA
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Jamar Pinkney Sr. stood stoically in a Highland Park courtroom today, silent as a judge ordered him back to jail without bond, accused of shooting his 15-year-old son in the head execution-style.

With waist-long dreadlocks, the postal carrier didn't flinch as his son's great-aunt wailed and had to be led from 30th District Court.


"This is the most horrible thing that's ever happened to him," Pinkney Sr.'s lawyer, Corbett O'Meara, said after the hearing, not addressing whether Pinkney feels any remorse about Monday's shooting. Pinkney Sr.'s preliminary exam is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 1 in 30th District Court in Highland Park.


"He's calm," O'Meara added. "He appears to understand what's going on."


Investigators say Pinkney was reacting with rage when he stripped his son naked, marched him outside the home of the boy's mother and executed him Monday afternoon.


Lazette Cherry, Jamar Jr.'s mother, said she wanted to get her 15-year-old son help when he came to her and said he had acted inappropriately with his 3-year-old half-sister.


There wasn’t a rape, Cherry said her son told her. But he confessed to his mother that he knew lying on top of the baby was wrong, she said.


So she called her son's father and told him what she believed happened in his home on Newport on Detroit’s east side.


“I called and told his father this isn’t something you sweep under the rug,” the devastated mother said today.


His father showed up at the house Monday afternoon with a gun, she said.


“He started beating him right here,” Cherry said from her living room. “I said, ‘No, please stop!’ ”


But the father marched Jamar Jr., a sophomore at Martin Luther King High School, outside.


“He got on his knees and begged, ‘No, Daddy! No!’ and he pulled the trigger,” she said. “There wasn’t nothing that my son wouldn’t do for his father. He loved his father so much."


The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office charged Pinkney Sr. with first-degree murder, punishable by up to life in prison. He's also been charged with three counts of felonious assault for pointing the gun at Cherry and two other people at her home before the shooting.


"No individual has the right to exact the death penalty on another no matter how reprehensible the behavior -- that is why we have laws," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said today in a statement announcing the charges.


“I hope he rots in jail,” Cherry said of the man she met while they worked at the post office. “He did not deserve that,” she said of her son.


As white teddy bears with red silk hearts bearing the words "I love you" sit on the grass next to her home where her son died, candle wrappers from a vigil held Tuesday night scattered around, Cherry still can't believe what happened.


"There's no justification for what he did, you know, downright shoot your child," she said, wondering aloud about her ex. "He didn't rape her or anything. So why did you have to come and take matters into your hands? We said we were going to get him help."


A fund has been set up to help the family with burial expenses for Jamar Jr. Donations can be made at the Charter One Bank branch in Highland Park.