In one report, before the execution, it was said that the father made his son strip before walking him outside.
Mom just wanted dad to help her with sonLazette Cherry wanted only to help her son, Jamar Pinkney Jr., when she called his father, and shared some of the most disturbing news she ever had heard.
Jamar, 15, had confessed to her that he had inappropriate contact with his 3-year-old half-sister in his father's home on Newport on Detroit's east side.
"I called and told his father this isn't something you sweep under the rug," Cherry said Wednesday.
Jamar Pinkney Sr. showed up at Cherry's house in Highland Park on 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, a sophomore at King High School, outside.
“He got on his knees and begged, ‘No, Daddy! No!’ and he pulled the trigger,” Cherry said from her home on North Street in Highland Park. “There wasn’t nothing that my son wouldn’t do for his father. He loved his father so much.”
Jamar was shot once in the head.Pinkney was charged Wednesday in 30th District Court in Highland Park with one count of first-degree murder, three counts of felonious assault and one count of felony firearm.
Pinkney stood stoically in the courtroom as Judge Brigette Officer ordered him back to jail without bond.
Pinkney, a mail carrier, didn't flinch as his son's great-aunt wailed and had to be led from the courtroom.
A preliminary exam is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 1.
"This is the most horrible thing that's ever happened to him," Pinkney's lawyer, Corbett O'Meara, said after the hearing.
"He's calm," O'Meara said. "He appears to understand what's going on."
Highland Park police investigators said Pinkney was reacting with rage when he attacked his son.
Cherry said the 3-year-old's mother took the girl to a hospital to be examined Sunday. But she said her son claimed he didn't rape the little girl and kept his clothes on.
The exam showed no physical evidence of sexual trauma, Cherry said. Still, she added, he knew he was wrong.
"He told because he knew it wasn't right," she said.
Detroit police spokesman John Roach said Wednesday that the department does not have any record of the family or local facilities reporting a sexual assault involving a little girl at Pinkney's home in the 5700 block of Newport.
Highland Park Detective LaNesha Jones, lead investigator on the case, said Wednesday that she's checking out the family's claims that the girl was taken to Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit to be examined for signs of sexual abuse.
Medical care providers are required to report allegations of sexual abuse to local police and social service agencies.
"If that did occur and they didn't, that's going to be an issue in and of itself," Jones said.
The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office charged Pinkney with the three counts of felonious assault for allegedly pointing the gun at Cherry and two other people at the Highland Park home.
"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 in a statement.
Cherry said that, after the shooting, Pinkney called her cell phone with a chilling message. "He said, 'Yeah, I took care of that,' " Cherry quoted Pinkney as saying, apparently mistaking her for the 3-year old's mother. "Why would you call her and say that?"
"I hope he rots in jail," she said of the man she met while they both worked at the post office. "He did not deserve that," she said of her son.
Edward Moore, spokesman for the U. S. Postal Service, said Pinkney was a letter carrier who worked out of the North End Post Office in Detroit. He has been an employee since 1994 and has never been disciplined.
One of Pinkney's neighbors, Carmen Murray, described him as a friendly, attentive father of three who is often seen working on his house. Others said he often helps neighbors shovel snow or cut grass.
"He's good with kids in the neighborhood. He helps with the kids. He buys them ice cream," Murray said.
Contact CECIL ANGEL: 313-223-4531 or angel@freepress.com
