Detroit Firefighter Joshua Krajewski Posts:
Rookie Detroit police officer killed ex-boyfriend on I-75 and didn't even know it
Detroit Free Press
March 07, 2021
She was one month out of the police academy when she fired 17 shots at the driver who tried to kill her Christmas Eve.
Shot in the arm and trapped in her Lincoln, the rookie squeezed the trigger until the magazine was empty.
It wasn't until two hours later at the hospital that she learned her attacker was the father of her child — a local hockey figure she had left 10 months earlier following his arrest on charges that he beat and raped her, and held her at gunpoint.
This is the story behind the Dec. 24 shootout on Interstate 75 in southwest Detroit, where Officer Jacquline Jones fought for her life after her ex-boyfriend rammed her off a service drive and over an embankment, sent her airborne onto a highway, and then pinned her against a cement construction wall and blasted six shots through her windshield. He also had handcuffs, a window breaker and a rope.
The highway shooting made a few headlines, but they only offered a sliver of a story that involves trauma, domestic abuse, an established hockey program for veterans, PTSD and an emotionally damaged soldier who left two children fatherless and a woman permanently scarred.
His name was Joshua Krajewski, a 34-year-old Detroit firefighter who died that December night from a gunshot to the head.
Krajewski was an Army veteran and founder of the Michigan Warriors Hockey Program, a nonprofit that has helped more than 100 disabled veterans heal mentally and physically on the ice. He was a hero to several of his comrades who, like him, struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and needed an outlet.
In the days after the shooting, Krajewski's death was initially declared a suicide by some on the Michigan Warriors' Facebook page, where he was portrayed as a "hero" and "great man."
This sent Jones' family reeling, especially her father, Darrell Jones, a 28-year veteran on the Detroit police force who blasted the Michigan Warriors on social media and accused the organization of covering up Krajewski's violent death and abusive history to protect its reputation and donations. He says the program knew he was violent, but ignored it because he was the president.
The Michigan Warriors program has denied engaging in any cover-up, saying there were two recent suicides on the team that year and some players assumed Krajewski had taken his life. The program said that it does not "condone domestic violence in any form" and that it removed Krajewski after he was criminally charged — but has acknowledged that mistakes were made.
"We were not transparent about this situation as it was a personal matter," the Board said in a January email to its members, referring to Krajewski's domestic violence charges. "In retrospect, maybe we could've done more to get him help."
Meanwhile, the Michigan Warriors has scrubbed its website clean of Krajewski's name, though multiple board members spoke at his funeral, and the Detroit Red Wing Alumni left this message on his funeral memorial page on Jan 10: "God bless Josh. A true friend of the Red Wing Alumni and appreciated by us all for the hard work with the MI Warrior Hockey club. Thoughts and prayers to his loved ones and family."
His mother and siblings say he was a loving father, son and brother, and a happy-go-lucky person who came back from Afghanistan and Iraq a different man, battling demons that no one really knew about.
Except Jones.
The 24-year-old mother says she knew Krajewski's dark side all too well. And she has the bruises and scars to prove it.
Jones, who was off duty on the night of the shooting, is currently on paid leave from the DPD. Chief James Craig has defended her actions, saying she was facing "imminent danger" that night. The Michigan State Police investigated the shooting and turned its findings over to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office Feb. 21.
MSP Lt. Michael Shaw would not disclose the investigation's findings. As of Friday, a charging decision had not yet been made by the prosecutor.
Jones believes she will be cleared, and hopes her ordeal helps other domestic abuse victims know that they are not alone, and, that they can get out.
In an exclusive interview with the Free Press, Jones opened up for the first time about the shooting, the years of abuse she hid with makeup and lies, and what finally pushed her to leave — a saga the Free Press pieced together through court records, police statements and interviews with family, friends and the judge who set her attacker free.
'I thought he was the perfect guy'
Jones was a waitress at the Dave & Buster's in Livonia when the handsome veteran with a sarcastic wit came in for a bite to eat.
It was spring 2018.
She was 21. He was 31 — divorced with a school-age son and a well-established hockey program that allowed him to rub elbows with Red Wings icons like Darren McCarty and Micky Redmond. Krajewski founded the program in 2014 as a therapeutic outlet following his honorable discharge from the military in 2009. He had served four years in Iraq and Afghanistan as a military police officer for the Army and a gunner on an MV until he suffered a back injury.
While in the service, he married his high school sweetheart, Laura. In 2012, he became a father to a baby boy. Oliver would become the love of his life.
Jones knew none of this when he sat at her table that June day. She only remembers being taken by his "funny sarcasm" and thinking "you have sarcasm? So do I."
And, she thought he was cute.
So when Krajewski left his phone number on his receipt, she saw no harm in texting him.
"He had one of those personalities that you can click with," Jones recalled in a February interview. "We just hit it off."
The first few months of their relationship were blissful. He was charming and funny.
"He was what I thought was the perfect guy," Jones recalled.
Then they moved in together.
It was three months into the relationship when Jones said she learned that Krajewski was a heavy drinker with mood swings and a violent temper. He drank almost daily, she said, sometimes a case of beer a day or a fifth of Jack Daniel's — depending on how he was feeling. And he became combative.
"You kind of had to walk on eggshells when he was drunk," she said.
Over time, he started belittling her, telling her she didn't have what it took to be a cop and that she couldn't take care of herself. While living together, she had quit her waitress job so that she could train for the police academy. But her self-confidence was eroding.
"I was completely dependent on him," she said. "His biggest thing was telling me, 'Well, what are you going to do without me? You have no money. You don't have a car. I pay for this. I pay for that. Who are you without me?' "
Lies. Bruises. Black eyes
With the booze and the anger came constant arguments. Pushing and shoving followed.
Before long, the beatings began.
Arguments led to open-fist blows to her face and arms, leaving her with bruises that she covered with makeup and long-sleeve shirts to hide the abuse from her family. But they caught on.
"Her long sleeves in the summer were a giveaway," said her father, the veteran cop. "I know a victim when I see one, and I know that you can’t help a victim who doesn’t want to be helped."
This was Jones. This was his daughter.
"I said, 'Only you will know when you’ve had enough. And you can come to us. We will take you in. We will help pay your bills, but you’ve gotta take the first step,' " Darrell Jones recalled telling her. "But she said, 'I got this. I got this. I got this.' "
Still, she kept pulling away from family.
"He hated my sister," she said. "Any type of communication with my family was a no-go. He'd say ... 'Your family doesn’t love you like I do.' "
Yet the beatings continued.
In November 2018 he gave her black eyes — she took pictures.
At Christmas that year, he beat her again during a trip to Florida. She and Krajewski had taken his son to Disney World when an argument led to him assaulting her outside their hotel room while the boy slept, leaving her with a swollen eye.
A witness called the Orlando police, Jones said, but she told the responding officers that it was only a verbal argument, that nothing had happened. The police gave Krajewski a warning and left.
Jones thought she'd had enough. She said she planned on leaving Krajewski when she returned from Florida.
But when they got home, she found out she was pregnant.
"I was afraid," she said. "I thought, 'how am I going to take care of myself? I have no job. no money saved. He pays for my car, my phone bill, everything that I need. How can I take care of a child?' "
So she stayed.
An interview with Darren McCarty
Ten weeks after the Florida trip, McCarty featured Krajewski as a special guest on his podcast to talk about his Warriors hockey program and PTSD.
"I was hittin' the bottle hard. I had a pill addiction. I felt alone," Krajewski said during the interview, referring to his first years out of the military.
But then he found hockey.
"I saw veterans who were hurting, myself included, and we just started playing hockey," Krajewski said in the Feb. 13, 2019 podcast. "I’m a lot different today than I was five years ago with this hockey program."
McCarty praised Krajewski on his podcast, telling him: "You are the glue to that Michigan Warriors team. "
Krajewski said that through his teammates, he learned the importance of talking about trauma, and that he wasn't alone.
"It’s so imperative to talk about it," Krajewski said. "It’s like a pot of boiling water. At some point, you're going to boil over."
That next day, he went home and beat Jones again, bruising her face and leaving hand prints on her throat. It was Valentine's Day 2019. Jones was about seven weeks pregnant and for the first time in their relationship, she went to the police. Her dad met her at the Livonia police station and saw the bruises and marks around her neck.
Krajewski was jailed overnight, though his mom picked him up the following day. There were no charges.
Jones' father alerted the Michigan Warriors about Krajewski's arrest and asked that he be immediately removed from the program. But the group kept him on because he wasn't charged. And, because the relationship continued: Jones had moved in with her dad following Krajewski's arrest, but three days later she went back to her boyfriend.
Army brought 'horrific things'
Shelley Paull of Livonia remembers picking up her son from jail that February day.
"I didn’t know anything about his abuse," Paull said in a recent interview. "He called me from the Livonia jail and said 'can you come pick me up?' They just let him go. That's when Jacquline said she didn't want any charges."
Paull said that she asked her son what had happened, and that he said it was relationship problems. " 'I have to make this work, I don’t want to be a single dad again,' " she recalled him telling her.
Paull said she knew her son had PTSD, but was unaware of any violence at home, or the details that led to his criminal charges in March 2020.
"I didn’t know any of that, he was embarrassed and he didn’t want me to know," she said.
Paull spoke through tears as she recalled the son she knew before he left for the military, the boy who played Little League baseball, football, high school rugby, and dreamed of becoming a cop.
"He never showed any signs of depression or anxiety growing up," Paull said. "He had a million friends. I've talked to his grade school and junior high friends — nobody ever saw anything. Nobody would have expected to happen what happened."
Paull recalled how thrilled her son was to join the military after graduating from Livonia Stevenson High School in 2004. He was intent on being part of Operation Iraqi Freedom following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So, right out of high school, he left for the military.
"He did see some horrific things, had to do some horrific things. He had friends die," Paull said. But there was one thing that kept him going — his son.
"His best buddy was his son Ollie, that was his buddy," his mother said. "He was an amazing father to Ollie."
The horror that caused her to leave
On Sept. 16, 2019, Krajewski became a father again. Jones gave birth to a girl and named her June.
By then, Krajewski was working his new job as a firefighter at Ladder 8 in southwest Detroit. He was still drinking, Jones said, but the abuse had stopped and life seemed calmer.
Then came the spring of 2020.
Jones went on a three-day trip to New Orleans in March with her grieving best friend whose boyfriend had committed suicide. He was a Michigan Warriors hockey player, and one of Krajewski's best friends. Jones thought her friend could use some time away.
But while on her trip, she said, Krajewski started sending her alarming texts and phone calls, accusing her of cheating on him. He shut off her phone, canceled her credit card and told her to stay in her hotel until she came home, or she'd "be done for."
The following day, he picked her up at the airport with June, yelling at her and slugging her in the arm as they drove home.
"I told him that I was done. I wanted to leave," she recalled. "His response was 'No. I wasn't leaving him.' He said he would crash this car and kill us all."
She stayed silent until they got home, thinking how she could get out of the house safely with her daughter.
At home, he went into a violent rage, grabbing her as she fought back, she said. They wrestled in the living room, where he pulled her to the ground by her hair and slammed her head into the hardwood floor. Then he pulled her into the kitchen, rammed her head on the tile floor before dragging her upstairs by the hair and forcing her to have sex. Once he was done, he let her go.
"I ran downstairs. He followed. He told me that I could leave the house, but I couldn't leave with our daughter, which wasn't going to happen," Jones recalled.
So she stayed put. He had taken her phone from her, so she couldn't call anyone. It was March 3. Krajewski had a hockey errand to run that night and he took Jones with him. In the car she told him the relationship wasn't working, that he needed help.
At home that night, after putting her daughter to bed, the two kept talking. He told her he would change, go to therapy, anything that would change her mind.
In the middle of the night, June woke up for a feeding. Jones fed her and rocked her back to sleep. Meanwhile, Krajewski had gone downstairs and was sitting on the couch sobbing.
"He said that he didn't want to live without me," she recalled.
Then he went to his office, pulled out a rifle from a closet and loaded it. He said he was going to kill himself. She said she pleaded: " 'Please, please don't do this' " and tried to leave the room. But he shut the door, sat on the floor, and with the rifle to his chin told her she had to watch, that it was her fault.
Jones looked away and stayed silent. Then he pointed the rifle at her throat. " 'Say something. Is this what you want?' " she recalled him telling her.
"I tell him, 'we can fix this, we can work it out,' " she recalled, noting she was saying anything to spare her life.
He put the gun down and they went to bed.
Pineapple emoji triggers 911 call
The next morning, Krajewski gave Jones her phone back and asked her to call a therapist.
"In my head, I'm thinking 'I have my phone. This is my way out,' " she said.
And so she texted an alert to her best friend. The two had a code if either was ever in trouble: Text a pineapple emoji, which meant call the cops to wherever I am.
She texted the pineapple, then deleted it in case Krajewski saw it.
Then her dad called. She talked his ear off, speaking so fast that he picked up that something was wrong. He started asking her yes and no questions. She texted him during the conversation that she had called 911.
Her dad did the same, and headed her way.
The next 10-15 minutes were gut-wrenching. She was upstairs in her room with Krajewski and June was in her swing.
"It felt like eternity. I'm thinking 'Dear God, where are these cops at?' "
Then her German shepherd started barking.
She went downstairs, pretending she was going to check out what the dog was barking at.
"I opened the door and ran out," she said. "There were five or six Livonia police officers ... all I could say is, 'my daughter is upstairs. I need to go get our daughter.' "
Amid the commotion, Krajewski jumped out of the bedroom window.
"He tried to run," Jones said. "They (police) chased him through the backyard, and got him."
Judge sets him free
On March 3, 2020, Krajewski was charged with domestic violence, assault with a dangerous weapon, felony firearm and third-degree criminal sexual conduct in Wayne County Circuit Court.
At his March 7 arraignment, he pleaded not guilty and Magistrate Linda Mack released him on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond, a tether and a no-contact with the victim order.
This made Jones' dad's blood boil.
"These people dropped the ball from day one on my daughter and it’s terrible," said Darrell Jones, noting his daughter got lucky in that she was a cop with a gun. "Had this been someone else’s daughter, their parents would have been planning a funeral. "
Chief Craig also criticized the bond decision, calling it a "horror story" waiting to happen.
"That officer had a protection order out of a neighboring city," Craig said of Jones. "She had a relationship with someone who had a history of violence. Sadly, this person was released. ... And he did particularly what his history said he would do — he located her, he found her and he attacked her."
Craig stressed: "Had the right thing been done with that case, would this person had been ... out? It’s deeply troubling."
Jacquline Jones was especially hurt.
"I felt that they didn’t believe what I was saying, that my story wasn’t worthy enough to keep him in longer," she said.
In a March 1 interview with the Free Press, Mack — the magistrate who granted bond — said that she couldn't recall the details of the year-old case, noting she arraigns up to 40 defendants a day. She said she's "usually a stickler" with domestic abuse defendants, and presumes investigators recommended he be released and that no one objected.
"I don’t think I would let someone out if they beat someone up," Mack said, adding that she typically only gets a snapshot of the cases. "I wish I remembered more. I don’t usually let people out on personal bond unless there’s some recommendation."
Mack also noted that there were several opportunities for parties to object to the bond, though that never happened. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office did not object to his bond, which was continued on May 20 with a tether.
When she learned of the tragic fallout, Mack said: " I always feel bad for any victims of crime. It’s hard to predict the future sometimes. ... It's sad. I feel bad. I wish it was something I could remember a little better."
Christmas Eve nightmare
Following his arrest, Krajewski stayed away from Jones for the next 10 months. No texts. No calls.
"I got comfortable with that, with his silence," Jones said.
But Krajewski was quietly coming undone. He had lost his firefighter job and relationship, got removed from his hockey program, and hadn't seen his daughter in months. The pandemic hit, putting his criminal case on hold. And he was drinking again.
Then came Christmas Eve.
Jones had gone to a friend's house in southwest Detroit on Dec. 23 and left around midnight. She was heading down a service drive along Interstate 75, when at a yield sign she felt someone tap her rear bumper.
Through her rearview mirror she saw a black pickup flash its lights, though Jones said she thought better than to get out, so she just kept driving. But the pickup started tailing her, speeding up as she sped up. Then it started ramming into her, over and over again, until it pushed her over an embankment and onto I-75.
The pickup followed her down the hill. Jones hit the gas, but there was no acceleration. She had blown a tire. And before she knew it, the pickup was ramming her again until she crashed into a cement construction barrier where the pickup pinned her in.
Trapped behind an airbag, Jones slid over to the passenger seat. Then, with her knees to her chest, reached for her department-issued handgun as a shadowy figure approached.
"It was then that I realized this person is trying to kill me," she recalled. She said she thought to herself, "I'm not going to die in my car right now."
Gunfire erupted.
"My finger did not come off the trigger until the slide locked," she recalled, noting she never got to see his face, only his outline and a black hoodie and a hat.
After she emptied her gun, there was silence. Jones climbed to the back seat of her car, rolled down the passenger side window and jumped over the construction barrier.
"I didn’t look back," she said. "I ran. I ran up the embankment and ended up on Springwells and Olivet."
She went to a house with a porch light and knocked on the door. A male voice said, "Who is it?"
"I work for DPD," she answered. "I was just shot on the freeway."
The man, a retired firefighter, opened the door, called 911 and bandaged her bloody arm.
The stranger revealed
Jones was transported to Detroit Receiving Hospital. So was the stranger she had shot. It never occurred to her that it was Krajewski, she said. He had been so quiet for 10 months. She thought someone she had put away was seeking revenge, or a carjacking had gone wrong.
Police took her statement at the hospital. An attorney with the Detroit Police Officers Association also was there as it was an officer-related shooting. She was at the hospital for more than two hours when the lawyer delivered the bombshell.
"She looks at me and says, 'I have to tell you something. ... The guy who tried to kill you was your daughter's father,' " Jones recalled. "I was in total shock. My dad came in. I'm sitting there and in complete awe. I couldn't say or do anything. I thought 'Is this real life? Is this really happening?' "
She also learned that police had found a tracker on her car that night.
As she tried to absorb it all, she learned that Krajewski had coded three times at the hospital. She asked whether she could go be with him.
"I didn't want him to die alone," she recalled.
But her dad told her no.
A family grieves
Krajewski's mother was sleeping when her sobbing daughter, Haley, came home frantic.
"She was crying so hard. ... She said, 'Mom, you gotta get up. Joshua's been in an accident. He's been shot!' " Paull recalled.
Haley Paull, 20, was the first one to get the call from the hospital. She was at work setting up her desk when she got the news. She called her oldest brother first, then went to her mom's house in Livonia.
"I couldn’t see him like that," Haley Paull recalled. "I stayed home."
Krajewski's mother got to the hospital in 35 minutes.
"I talked to the doctor. He said there’s no chance of him ever surviving that," Shelley Paull recalled.
Her son was on life support. She called her son's first wife, Laura, who was a nurse. "I told her, 'I need you to come here. I don't know what to do.' "
Just a few days earlier, Josh had been at her house, chatting in the kitchen and listening to his mom talk about the science fiction gaming items and books she had bought her grandson Oliver for Christmas.
"He said, 'Oh yeah, he'll be really excited,' " she recalled through tears. "I said see you Christmas morning and he said, 'OK.' "
Josh then headed out the door and climbed in his truck.
"I said 'I love you' — and he said, 'I love you too.' And that was it."
After two more hours of watching her son on machines, she let him go.
"None of us knew exactly what he was going through," Paull said. "We'd ask, 'Are you OK? Are you sure you’re OK?' The answer was always, 'yeah I’m good.' "
Paull said she is heartbroken. So is her daughter, Haley, who wants the world to know Krajewski as she did: The doting big brother who took her to arcades, restaurants, ZapZone; who flew her to Savannah to visit him when he was stationed there; who took her shopping for her mom's birthday gifts, and brought cigars to the hospital when Oliver was born.
"He loved that kid," she said crying. "I promise you he was a good person."
"I just think he had a mental break," the sister continued. "I don’t think he did this on purpose. He would never do something like that in his right mind. It's just not who he was." "
Moving on
Jones spends her days now focused on June, a lively, rosy-cheeked, 17-month-old who keeps her busy as she continues to heal. She said she tries hard not to think about the night on the highway, though the "what-ifs" creep in.
"I have sat there and gone through the list of everything that could have happened, that could have gone wrong, how this played out was — it wasn’t supposed to work out in my favor, but it did," said Jones, who strongly believes divine intervention was involved. "I feel that his bullets were guided by God. I was protected that night.”
But amid her recovery, she finds herself grieving.
"I'm now mourning the death of him. He was a part of my life. I had a child with him ... and there was a point where I loved this man," she said, still trying to make sense of it all.
"He was fighting demons that he wanted to fix himself," she said. "I wanted to help him. I saw potential that he didn't. I wanted to be the person who no one else would be.
"I can’t fault anybody for feeling that he was a great guy or a great friend," she said. "But not everyone saw the side of him that I did."
After leaving the relationship, Jones went on to pursue her law enforcement dream. She joined the police academy in May 2020 and graduated in November — grateful for the training that she believes helped save her life.
"Though there was never a specific instruction on 'when your ex-boyfriend tries to kill you, this is what you do,'" she said, adding "I remember being taught — bullets go through windshields."
Jones now hopes to serve as a beacon of hope for other women who are still stuck in abusive relationships.
"I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this," she said. "I know how it feels to think that you need this person because you can’t make it out there in life without them, especially when they have that control over you."
But there is a way out, she said. Her life is proof.
Still, the trauma is hard to erase.
"Why would he do that? And why would he make me do that? Why would he make me fight for my life?" she wonders.
There's also the painful reminder: She took his life, without knowing it.
"There was definitely that moment of regret, of 'What did I just do?' " she recalled thinking in the hospital.
But then she remembers the terrifying moments trapped in her car.
"I’m gonna die. I’m going to be murdered on I-75 in my 2009 Lincoln," she remembers thinking. "Whoever you are, you’re not going to take me away from my daughter."
In the end, she chose herself.
"It's all because of June," she said. "My daughter. It's been my daughter from the start."
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