Google Maps Street View Shows Gun-Toting Man On Porch Of Detroit Home Where Toddler Was Later Found Dead
Google maps has been known to catch a strange image or two on its street view, but what it found in Detroit was chilling — a man pointing what appears to be a shotgun at the camera on the porch of a home where later a toddler would be found dead in the closet.
The Google Street View picture in Detroit was time stamped September 2009 and shows a group of men standing ominously on a porch, CBS Detroit noted. One of the men appears to be holding a shotgun, and in a different view of the home taken moments later he is seen pointing the gun at the Google Maps truck.
The same yellow brick house with the green porch showed up again in the Detroit news this summer when 1-year-old Zyia Turner found dead in a closet. Her father said his brother was watching several children in the home when the girl went missing. Police cadaver dogs later found her underneath a pile of clothes in the closet.
The Google Maps discovery was made by Maryland meteorologist Jacob Wykoff, who was recently in Detroit on a business trip. Wykoff said he couldn’t believe it when he looked up the home and saw the gunman on the porch.”I was actually just there in July,” Wykoff told CBS Detroit. “It’s certainly uneasy to see that type of stuff, I guess it happens in any major city, but Detroit sort of has a reputation now … That he actually points the gun at him?”
The Google Maps picture has made the rounds on the internet, The Detroit News noted, starting with a Detroit message board and spreading to tech blogs and Reddit.com.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said the picture does not necessarily constitute a crime, as the details are too murky to determine exactly what is happening. And it isn’t illegal to carry a gun on your own property, which the man appears to be.
It also appears the Google maps picture from Detroit isn’t connected with Zyia Turner’s death, seeing as it took place three years prior, but commenters on Facebook think it paints a bad picture of the city nonetheless.
“It’s a shame the image is being shown,” Merry Campbell wrote on Facebook about the Google maps Detroit picture. “It gives a terrible impression of the city, which already has a bad reputation, as it is. I hope that whoever is in charge at Google maps will reshoot it!”
