At about 1 p.m. on October 20, 2011, Yulanda Russell, a nursing instructor, had just gotten out of her 2012 Dodge Charger parked in the driveway of her home on Heyden Street in Detroit, Michigan, when a man with a gun approached. As she backed away from him, she tripped and fell backward. The man grabbed her purse and got into the car. When he was unable to start the vehicle, Russell told him to press down on the brake and push the starter button.
The car started and the gunman drove off. When police arrived, she told them that as she was sitting in the car, she noticed a silver Dodge Charger pass by. She told the police that the gunman had gotten out of the silver Charger. She said the gunman was a light-skinned black man who wore a black skull cap. She said he was about 20 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighed about 160 pounds.
The crime went unsolved until January 2013 when police received an anonymous tip that a 2011 Dodge Charger was being offered for sale on Craig’s List, and that it was Russell’s 2012 Charger. Jessica Worrall, a Grosse Pointe, Michigan police officer assigned to the ACTION Auto Task Force, and Larry LaFond, an agent for the National Insurance Crime Bureau, set up a meeting with a man who identified himself as “Mike” to see the car.
On January 12, 2013, Worrall and LaFond, who were undercover, met “Mike” and Worrall got into the vehicle, while LaFond opened the truck and inspected the car. LaFond saw that the vehicle identification number in front of the windshield had been taped over. He found another vehicle identification number on the car that had not been covered that showed the car was a 2012 model, not a 2011 model, and that the car actually was Russell’s car.
LaFond removed his hat and smoothed his hair, a pre-arranged signal that officers who were conducting surveillance should move in. As the police arrested “Mike,” 31-year-old Kenneth Bullock drove up in a rented vehicle.
“That’s my car,” he declared. When Bullock showed them a title to the car matching the fraudulent vehicle identification, he was arrested as well.
On January 14, 2013, Russell came to the police station and identified Bullock in a six-person live lineup as the man who had carjacked and robbed her. Bullock, who had a prior conviction for armed robbery, was charged with carjacking, armed robbery, using a firearm in the commission of a felony, and illegal possession of a firearm by a felon. No one else was charged in the crime.
On June 12, 2013, Bullock went to trial in Wayne County Circuit Court. The prosecution’s case relied upon the testimony of Worrall, LaFond, Russell and Wayne County police Sergeant Frank Carroll.
Russell identified Bullock as the person who robbed her. She said she was 100 percent positive, even though Bullock had a goatee and was 10 years older than her initial description of a man about 20 years old who was clean-shaven. She now said that she had not seen the man get out of the gray Charger.
Carroll testified that the lineup that included Bullock had the same five fillers that were used in another lineup that same day in an unrelated case. Bullock’s defense attorney, Marvin Barnett, contended the lineup was tainted because Bullock was the only light-skinned Black man, and because it included men ranging from 20 to 31 who ranged in height from 5 feet 6 inches to 6 feet 1 inch. One of the fillers had a mustache and another had braids.
There was no photograph of the lineup because Carroll said there was no camera available that day. He insisted the lineup was fair.
Carroll testified that he told Russell to take her time to look at the six people in the lineup, but that she identified Bullock “shockingly fast. She was 100 percent emphatic that that was the person.”
During closing arguments, prosecutor Thomas Beadle argued that Russell had correctly identified Bullock as the gunman.
Barnett argued that Russell had made a mistake because she was influenced by the suggestive lineup.
On June 13, 2013, after a little more than an hour of deliberation, the jury convicted Bullock of carjacking, armed robbery, and the two weapons charges.
At his sentencing hearing on July 8, 2013, attorney Marlon Evans filed a motion for a new trial based on the failure of Barnett to call Dickow Dehko, who ran an auto collision business, as a witness. During a hearing, Dehko testified that he had purchased the Charger in the fall of 2012 after it had been badly smashed in an accident on Interstate 94 east of Detroit. He said he had intended to repair the car, but instead sold it to Bullock for $9,000.
Judge Vera Massey Jones characterized Dehko’s testimony as unreliable. She also noted that Dehko admitted that he failed to report his $2,000 profit from the sale to the Internal Revenue Service and that the transfer was illegal because he failed to first record his ownership of the vehicle with the Michigan Secretary of State.
She said Evans could bring Barnett to court at a later hearing to explain why he did not call Dehko as a witness, but in the meantime, she said she would go ahead with the sentencing.
Bullock insisted he was innocent.
“Your honor,” he said, “I know I have made some mistakes in my past. I never once seen this victim. I did not carjack this lady. I swear to God. I don’t know nothing about no carjacking. I was not there. I was nowhere around, your Honor. I never seen this victim a day in my life.”
He added, “Your Honor, I purchased this vehicle. I am innocent.”
Judge Jones then sentenced him to 30 to 70 years in prison on the carjacking and armed robbery charge plus a mandatory consecutive two-year sentence for committing a felony with a firearm. He was sentenced to time served on the felon in possession of a firearm conviction.
Five days later, Barnett testified that he had interviewed Dehko prior to the trial and had listed him as a witness. But he did not call Dehko because Dehko could not provide the name of the person who sold him the Charger, which made Barnett suspicious. Moreover, when Dehko was shown a copy of the title with the fraudulent vehicle identification number, he said he got it from Bullock. Barnett said he and Bullock were stunned by the comment.
Barnett said Bullock then walked out of the room with Dehko. When they returned, Dehko said he had made a mistake.
The prosecution presented evidence that Dehko had used nine different aliases in the past and that he had numerous convictions for receiving and concealing stolen property in connection with his collision repair business.
In January 2015, the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the convictions and sentence. The court rejected the defense assertion that the lineup was unfair, citing a prior Michigan Appeals Court ruling that said police were not required to search for “twin-like individuals” to fill out a lineup. The court also said that Barnett’s decision not to call Dehko as a witness was a reasonable strategic decision.
More than a decade later, on May 28, 2025, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and Bullock's defense attorney filed an agreed motion to vacate the convictions and to dismiss the case.
The motion said that Jamare Rucker had admitted that he carjacked Russell. At the time of the crime, Rucker was a member of the Bounty Hunter Bloods street gang, which committed murders, carjackings, robberies, drive-by shootings, home invasions, and arsons, in Detroit and across the country.
Rucker and Jeremy Jackson were convicted of second-degree murder in the February 2014 fatal shooting of Courtney Meeks, a CVS pharmacy security guard who sought to break up a carjacking attempt of a woman and her infant son. Rucker and Jackson were sentenced to 33 to 60 years in prison.
Rucker confessed that he carjacked a silver Dodge Charger on October 20, 2011, and later that day, he carjacked Russell’s Charger, the motion said.
Rucker’s physical description “matched the description given by Ms. Russell immediately after the carjacking,” the motion said. “Ms. Russell testified that there was a silver Charger in the area during her carjacking, which aligns with Mr. Rucker’s confession.”
The motion said Russell’s Charger changed hands multiple times before Bullock bought it. A man named John Jackson used a fake Michigan car title to get what appeared to be a clear title from the state of Illinois for the Charger. That Illinois title was then used to transfer the stolen car to a woman named Araina Flowers.
Four months after the carjacking, Keenan Hester, an acquaintance of Flowers, crashed the car on Interstate 94 and Flowers eventually transferred the title to Bullock’s mother, according to the motion.
“There is no apparent connection between Mr. Bullock and the parties who orchestrated the fraudulent title transfers,” the motion said.
On May 28, 2025, Wayne County Judge Shannon Walker granted the motion and dismissed the case. Bullock was released after spending nearly 12 years in prison since the date of his conviction.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 06-03-2025
Last Update Date: 06-03-2025
