## Facts

- In the early morning hours of May 6, 2023, Samuel McCray entered a Detroit gas-station convenience store where Al‑Hassan Walid Aiyash worked as the attendant.
- McCray selected about four dollars’ worth of snacks and beverages and attempted to pay, but his card was declined.
- McCray threatened to kill Aiyash and tried to leave the store with the unpaid items.
- From behind bullet-resistant glass, Aiyash remotely locked the store’s only door, preventing McCray from leaving and trapping McCray inside with three patrons.
- Aiyash did not know McCray was armed.
- For several minutes, Aiyash verbally taunted McCray while the patrons repeatedly pleaded with Aiyash to open the door and let McCray leave; one patron attempted to calm McCray.
- Aiyash eventually released the door lock and opened the door.
- After the door opened, McCray—believing that one of the patrons had insulted him—pulled a gun and shot all three patrons.
- Gregory Kelly was shot multiple times and died; the other two patrons were also shot and survived.
- The prosecution charged Aiyash with involuntary manslaughter, alleging that Aiyash’s conduct (locking the door and escalating the confrontation) caused Kelly’s death.
- The district court bound Aiyash over for trial, and the circuit court affirmed the bindover; Aiyash sought interlocutory review in the Michigan Court of Appeals.

## Issues

1. Whether Aiyash’s conduct in locking the store’s door and prolonging the confrontation could be a proximate cause of Gregory Kelly’s death for purposes of involuntary manslaughter.
2. Whether McCray’s intentional shooting was an intervening, superseding cause because it was not reasonably foreseeable from Aiyash’s conduct.

## Decision

- The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the circuit court order affirming the bindover.
- The court reasoned that, even assuming the prosecution could show factual causation, involuntary manslaughter also requires criminal proximate cause.
- McCray’s intentional act of shooting the patrons was not reasonably foreseeable from Aiyash’s conduct and therefore severed the causal connection needed to hold Aiyash criminally liable for Kelly’s death.
- Because proximate cause was not established on the prosecution’s theory, bindover on involuntary manslaughter was improper.

## Legal Principles

- Involuntary manslaughter requires proof that the defendant’s conduct was both a factual cause and a proximate (legal) cause of the victim’s death.
- Criminal proximate cause turns on reasonable foreseeability: the death must be a direct and natural result of the defendant’s conduct in light of the risks the conduct created.
- An intervening act may break the chain of causation when it is independent of the defendant’s conduct and not reasonably foreseeable.
- A third party’s intentional criminal act commonly constitutes a superseding cause unless the prosecution shows that such intentional violence was a reasonably foreseeable result of the defendant’s actions.
- At bindover, the prosecution must present evidence supporting probable cause for each element of the charged offense, including proximate cause.

## Conclusion

In *People v. Aiyash*, the Michigan Court of Appeals held that the prosecution failed to show that the gas-station attendant’s decision to keep the store door locked during a dispute over a small unpaid purchase was a proximate cause of a patron’s death, because the customer’s later decision to pull a gun and shoot bystanders was not reasonably foreseeable and therefore operated as a superseding intervening cause; the court reversed the order affirming bindover on involuntary manslaughter.


People v. Aiyash, 2024 WL 4293329 (2024)