Davontae Sanford, who was exonerated in 2016, was shot last night
Davontae Sanford, who spent years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a quadruple murder as a teenager, was shot and wounded Saturday night, according to the Detroit Police Department.
A DPD crime report, which does not identify Sanford by name, said a 24-year-old black male suffered a gunshot wound to his right leg while at the Martin Luther King apartments on Chene Street, east of downtown, around 9 p.m.,
The police department later confirmed that the victim in the report was Sanford, who was released from prison in June 2016 after being exonerated.
The aftermath of the incident was witnessed by a 23-year-old black female who said she heard several gunshots. When she looked out the window, she said, she saw the victim running from the housing unit.
The police report on the incident continued to say the victim was “very uncooperative with arriving units, so therefore factual information about the shooting is still unknown at the time.”
Sanford was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital by medics. He was listed in stable condition.
“My mind is in a thousand places,Thank you for you’re prayers!!!” Sanford’s mother Taminko Sanford-Timon posted to Facebook early Sunday morning.
In June 2016, a judge released Sanford from prison and vacated his conviction. The then 23-year-old had spent, at that point, nearly nine years in prison for a quadruple homicide that occurred when he was 15-years-old.
The exoneration was the result of an 11-month re-investigation by Michigan State Police into the four homicides. Investigators found that former Detroit police officer James Tolbert — an ex-Flint police chief — allegedly lied during sworn testimony. Tolbert had said Sanford drew a scene of the crime when it was, in fact, the police officer that drew the sketch. Following the investigation, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, with Sanford’s attorneys, moved to dismiss charges against him.
Last week Sanford’s attorney Bill Goodman filed a suit in U. S. District Court in Detroit against the city and two officers involved in his case. The suit seeks punitive and compensatory damages.
