FILE – Aaron Dean listens to testimony during the sentencing phase of his trial in the Tarrant County 396th District Court on December 16, 2022, in Fort Worth, Texas. Former Fort Worth Police officer Dean, who fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson through a back window of her home in 2019, was sentenced Tuesday, Dec. 20, to nearly 12 years in prison over his manslaughter conviction . (Amanda McCoy/Star-Telegram via AP, Pool, File)
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP Reports) — A former Texas police officer who fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson through a back window of her home in 2019 was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years and 10 months in prison over his conviction for manslaughter.
Aaron Dean, 38, faced up to 20 years in prison, but jurors also had the option to sentence him to probation. The same jury that found him guilty of manslaughter on Thursday also decided to convict him.
The white Fort Worth officer shot the 28-year-old black woman as she answered a call on an open front door. Her guilty verdict was a rare conviction of an officer for killing someone who was also armed with a pistol.
During the trial, the primary controversy was whether Dean knew Jefferson was armed. Dean testified that she saw his gun; prosecutors said the evidence proved otherwise.
Dean shot Jefferson on October 12, 2019, after a neighbor called a non-emergency police line to report that the front door of Jefferson’s home was open. That night he was playing video games with his 8-year-old nephew and it was revealed at trial that they had left the doors open to vent the smoke from the burgers the boy had burned.
The case was unusual in the relative speed with which, amid public outrage, the Fort Worth Police Department released video of the shooting and arrested Dean. He had finished the police academy the year before and had left the police force without talking to the detectives.
Hub peek embed (Texas) – Compressed layout (auto-embed)
Since then, the case has been repeatedly adjourned due to litigation between attorneys, Dean’s lead attorney terminal illness, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Body camera recordings showed that Dean and a second responding officer did not identify themselves as officers at the home. Principal and Officer Carol Darch testified that they thought the house might have been burglarized and quietly walked to the fenced yard looking for signs of a break-in.
There, Dean, whose gun was drawn, fired a single shot through the window a split second after yelling at Jefferson, inside, to show his hands.
Dean testified that he had no choice when he saw Jefferson pointing the barrel of a gun directly at him. But under cross-examination by prosecutors, he acknowledged numerous wrongdoings, repeatedly admitting that the actions taken before and after the shooting were “another bad police work.”
Darch had his back to the window when Dean fired, but testified that he never mentioned seeing a gun before pulling the trigger and said nothing about the gun as they rushed through the house.
Dean admitted on the witness stand that he only said anything about the gun after seeing it on the floor inside the house and that he never gave Jefferson first aid.
