Last November, William Kennedy was hanging out at his girlfriend’s house on the east side of Detroit with his girlfriend, her 2-year-old son, and another friend when her ex-boyfriend unexpectedly appeared at the front door. “‘If I kick this door in and somebody’s in there, they dead,’” Kennedy recalled the man saying. “When they came into the house, he told his homeboy to shoot me.”
When one of the men shot at him, Kennedy fired back with his own weapon and hid behind a wall. “I don’t know if it was a machine gun or a switch,” Kennedy said of the attack, “but it was a whole lot of bullets.” After the shootout, he heard the toddler crying; a bullet had gone through the boy’s leg. Kennedy drove him and his mother to the hospital, then he left.
He knew the police would be after him because a child had been hurt, so Kennedy called Ray Winans, the CEO of Detroit Friends and Family, a nonprofit that primarily does outreach work, provides mentorship, job training, and other support to young people on the east side. Kennedy had known Winans since he was a kid, and he knew the activist would help him safely surrender to the police because, since 2022, Winans has spearheaded a “safe surrender” initiative. Within hours, Winans escorted Kennedy to the station, where Kennedy explained his version of events and provided the police with his concealed carry permit…