Biography
George Young was one of the "Livernois 5," five young Black men swept up in a Detroit police dragnet after the July 1975 Livernois–Fenkell rebellion and charged in the death of Marian Pyszko, a white autoworker killed by a crowd during the unrest. The uprising had erupted when Andrew Chinarian, the white owner of Bolton's Bar on Livernois Avenue, shot 18-year-old Obie Wynn in the back of the head in his parking lot — a killing for which Chinarian ultimately served only six months on a misdemeanor charge of careless use of a firearm. As the city demanded answers for Pyszko's death, police rounded up young Black men who could be tied to the area; the five defendants were held for about eleven months and tried three times before all of them were acquitted and released.
The Livernois report individually identifies George Young and Douglas Lane as the two juvenile defendants whose charges had already been dropped before the June 18 jury acquittal of the three adults. Its retrospective account says all five were finally free. The collective eleven-month narrative is not used to invent this juvenile’s individual physical release date or copy the adults’ jury verdict to him.
