A former Texas police officer was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 12 years in prison for shooting Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman whose neighbours asked police to check on her when they saw a door to her house lying open.
In 2019, former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean, who is white, entered Jefferson’s backyard and shot her through her back window mere moments after asking her to raise her hands and without first identifying himself as a police officer.
The interaction began when Ms Jefferson heard strange noises coming from her backyard in the early morning hours as she was playing video games with her young nephew. She grabbed her pistol and went to investigate, looking out through the window, where she saw Dean.
Prosecutors argued the officer unnecessarily rushed to violence and didn’t give Ms Jefferson a chance to comply.
"If you can’t feel safe in your own home? Where can we feel safe?” prosecutor Ashlea Deener said in her closing statements. “It’s where we make memories. That’s why it’s sacred. That’s why it’s so important. Atatiana didn’t commit a crime by walking up to her window to protect herself and her nephew.”
Dean’s defence argued he was legitimately acting in self-defence when he saw an armed woman standing at the window.
"This is a tragedy,” attorney Bob Gill said in his closing statements, CBS reports. “It was a tragedy on that day. And it will continue to be one. But a tragedy doesn’t always equate to a crime.”
The shooting was a rare instance of police violence in which an officer was swiftly rebuked for excessive use of force. In general, police enjoy wide protections and ironclad union support when they use force against civilians if they believe they are threatened and acting in self-defence.
However, two days after the 2019 shooting, Dean resigned from the Fort Worth police department and was charged with murder.
Though the pandemic delayed the proceedings, family members both celebrated the eventual sentence and shared the pain of losing Atatiana, who had moved to Fort Worth to help look after her ailing mother, and had plans to attend medical school.
“Atatiana Jefferson was a bright, vibrant light. Aaron Dean, what you thought, when you shot our baby through her heart, was that you were going to put her light out,” one relative said in court. “That’s what you thought. But I’m here to tell you that Atatiana was that light that refuses to die.”
