Fort Worth Officer Who Killed Black Woman in Her Home Charged With Murder

By Tom Dart, Guardian UK

15 October 19

 

he Fort Worth police officer who fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson inside her bedroom after arriving to conduct a welfare check was charged with murder on Monday night, authorities said.

Aaron Dean was arrested on a murder charge and was held at Tarrant county jail before being released on bond, which had been set at $200,000.

Hours earlier, the interim Fort Worth police chief, Ed Kraus, said Dean had resigned and would have been fired had he not done so.

Jefferson, 28, was playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew in the early hours of Saturday morning, her family’s lawyer said, when she was killed by the officer who was outside the property, had not parked in front of the house, did not identify himself and appears to have given her no time to respond to his initial command before shooting through a window.

Body camera footage released by police shows an officer with a flashlight walk around the house. He appears to catch sight of someone inside, yells, “Put your hands up, show me your hands,” then fires a shot through a window less than a second later.

Jefferson died at the scene.

“There is simply no justification for his actions,” Ashley Carr, Jefferson’s oldest sister, said at a press conference on Monday morning. “She was enjoying her life in her home, where no one would have expected her life to be in harm’s way, especially not in the hands of a civil servant who had taken the oath to serve and protect.

“We demand justice for Atatiana through an independent, thorough and transparent process.”

Lee Merritt, an attorney for the family, said in a statement on Twitter: “The family of Atatiana Jefferson is relieved that Aaron Dean has been arrested & charged with murder. We need to see this through to a vigorous prosecution & appropriate sentencing. The City of Fort Worth has much work to do to reform a brutal culture of policing.”

The officer, who was initially placed on administrative leave, was scheduled to be interviewed by the Fort Worth police department’s major case unit on Monday. He had worked for the department for about 18 months and his record was clean except for a traffic accident.

Kraus said that Dean was not cooperating with the investigation.

“Had the officer not resigned I would have fired him,” he said at a press conference, citing violations of departmental policies on use of force, de-escalation and unprofessional conduct.

“I’m so sorry for what occurred,” Kraus said. “Nobody looked at that video and said there’s any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately.” He said he is trying to train officers to “act and react with a servant’s heart instead of a warrior’s heart”.

Kraus said that a criminal investigation into the shooting is ongoing. He also said the department has “presented a preliminary case to the FBI to review the officer’s actions for possible civil rights violations”.

Fort Worth’s mayor, Betsy Price, said the city will appoint a “third-party panel of national experts” to review the department.

The former officer is white. Jefferson was black. Attorney Lee Merritt suggested that the response to a call to a non-emergency line at 2.23am on Saturday from a concerned neighbour who noticed the doors were open, was escalated because the house is in a predominantly African American area of the Texas city.

“This was a wellness call,” Merritt told reporters. “It’s beyond me to begin to understand what kind of police force responds to a wellness call with the equivalent of Swat. There were several officers prowling around the property … as if they were conducting some clandestine abstraction.”

Kraus said that non-emergency and 911 calls go through the same dispatcher.

Merritt said the doors were open so a cool breeze would enter the house while Atatiana, who was known as “Tay”, played video games with her eight-year-old nephew, Zion, who was present when she was shot and will receive counselling.

“I ask myself, what would have happened if that little boy went to the window instead of his auntie?” Merritt asked. “He saw her when she fell.”

Jefferson was a biology graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans and reportedly worked in pharmaceutical equipment sales. Family members said she had decided to move into the property in order to look after her ailing mother.

Merritt said a spate of fatal shootings by police in Fort Worth this year – officers have killed six people since the start of June, Kraus said – showed federal law enforcement should take over the investigation into the shooting, as well as conduct a review of what he described as systemic problems with the department.

Merrit had said that the failure to arrest Dean promptly was “a source of continued agitation for this family and this community”.

Ashley Carr described her sister as “a smart, ambitious, kind person with a nurturing spirit”.

Another sister, Amber Carr, said Jefferson had planned to take her sister’s children to the State Fair of Texas last weekend and would help Zion get ready for school.

“He was the one who told me what happened,” she said.

Jefferson was killed less than two weeks after Amber Guyger, a white former officer in nearby Dallas, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of Botham Jean, a black man who was eating ice cream in his apartment when she burst in and shot him.

Dean’s bail has been set at $200,000.