FORT WORTH — Minutes before she was shot and killed by a Fort Worth police officer, Atatiana K. Jefferson was playing video games in her bedroom with her 8-year-old nephew, a lawyer for her family said Sunday.
Ms. Jefferson, 28, was proud of being the “cool auntie” to her siblings’ children, and had stayed up into the wee hours of Saturday morning with her nephew, Xbox controllers in their hands, according to S. Lee Merritt, the family’s lawyer. But the pair grew concerned around 2:30 a.m., he said, when they heard rustling outside the house and saw flashlights.
A neighbor had called the police after seeing Ms. Jefferson’s front and side doors ajar, a call he later said he regretted making. The two responding officers quietly crept around outside the dark house, where Ms. Jefferson lived with her mother.
After unlatching a fence door and walking into the back yard, a white male officer saw Ms. Jefferson, who is black, through her bedroom window. He shouted for her to put her hands up and immediately fired a single shot through the glass, according to body camera footage released by the department. The officers do not identify themselves as police in the video.
Ms. Jefferson’s nephew was still in the bedroom when she was killed, the police said (Martinez “Woman’”1).
Ms. Jefferson, 28, sold medical pharmaceutical equipment from home while studying to apply to medical school. She had earned a degree in biology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2014.
Ms. Jefferson was a loving aunt who would play basketball and video games with her nephews, her sister Amber Carr said. She had recently moved in with her mother, who had health problems — and learned about her daughter’s shooting while in a hospital.
One of Ms. Jefferson’s neighbors, James Smith, had called a nonemergency line at 2:23 a.m. on Saturday to express concern that the doors of Ms. Jefferson’s house had been open for several hours.
“I haven’t seen anybody moving around,” he told the dispatcher in a calm voice. “It’s not normal for them to have the doors open this time of night.”
Mr. Smith’s niece later said that he was upset with how the police responded, and that he had never suggested a burglary was taking place (Martinez “Fort” 2).
Dana Williams, Mr. Smith’s niece, said her uncle was shaken and too distraught to talk to reporters. He was particularly upset, she said, that the police had parked on an adjacent street, rather than pulling up in front of Ms. Jefferson’s house or into her driveway.
Ms. Williams said her uncle told his family that he had never told the police that he suspected a burglary was taking place. “Why did they have to go in like that?” he keeps asking, Ms. Williams said.
Ms. Williams said Ms. Jefferson’s family had come over and told her uncle that he had done nothing wrong. She said her uncle has lived in the same house for more than 50 years, and that the family would often see Ms. Jefferson outside washing her car or taking care of her mother. Children from the two families would often play together. (Martinez “Woman” 3).
[Interim Police Chief] Kraus said the call was relayed to the two officers who responded as a call for an “open structure,” a vague classification that could mean anything from an abandoned house to a burglary in progress. It was not a welfare check, in which case officers would often knock on the house’s doors or call inside.
A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window. When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.
“It makes sense that she would have a gun if she felt that she was being threatened or that there was someone in the back yard,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Body camera footage released by the Police Department provides some details of the shooting.
Two officers responding to the call parked a block away from Ms. Jefferson’s house before unlatching a fence door and entering the backyard. “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” Mr. Dean yelled when he saw Ms. Jefferson. He then immediately fired one shot through the glass.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” Chief Kraus said. “I get it. We’re trying to train our officers better.”
The officers did not identify themselves to Ms. Jefferson before she was killed.
Chief Kraus said that the officers believed they were responding to an “open structure” call and appeared to approach the house in that manner, rather than ringing a doorbell or calling into the house (What 2-3).
“I get it,” Chief Kraus said of the widespread public anger that followed the release of body camera video in the case. It showed that Ms. Jefferson had been given no warning that it was a police officer who had crept into her backyard, shined a light into her bedroom window and shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” immediately before firing a single fatal shot.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” the chief said.
[A similar incident had occurred recently] in nearby Dallas where a black man had been shot by an off-duty police officer in his own apartment … (Martinez “Fort” 2-3)
Ms. Jefferson was killed less than two weeks after the conclusion of the case in Dallas, in which Amber R. Guyger, a white former police officer, was convicted of murder. Ms. Guyger shot her unarmed black neighbor, Botham Shem Jean, in his apartment last year, claiming she thought the apartment was her own. [Her apartment was directly above his] The former officer was sentenced to 10 years in prison this month after a highly publicized trial (Martinez “Fort” 5).
… Fort Worth ...residents have frequently complained about abuse at the hands of the police. Since June, Fort Worth officers have shot and killed six people.
“A murder charge and an arrest is a good start — it’s more than we are used to seeing,” S. Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer who is representing Ms. Jefferson’s family, said on Monday night. But like many others, he said he was waiting to see how the case was prosecuted.
“Fort Worth has a culture that has allowed this to happen,” he said. “There still needs to be a reckoning.”
In interviews on Monday, community members recited prior episodes with authorities from memory: In 2009 a man with a history of mental illness died after he was Tasered by the Fort Worth police, which his family had called for help. In 2016, a mother called the police to report that a neighbor had choked her young son for littering, but the mother herself ended up getting arrested. In the video-recorded encounter, the mother, Jacqueline Craig, was forced to the ground and placed in handcuffs; her teenage daughters were also detained.
Community activists also cited the seven police shootings since early summer, six of them fatal, including the killing of a man who the police thought was carrying a rifle but was actually pointing a flashlight at officers after barricading himself inside a house.
“We’re beyond anger,” said the Rev. Kyev Tatum, a pastor at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth. “It’s trauma now. It’s unaddressed, toxic stress.”
Mr. Dean had been with the Fort Worth Police Department since April 2018, after graduating from the police academy a month earlier, according to documents provided by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, a state regulatory agency.
On Monday night, he was released from the Tarrant County jail after posting a $200,000 bond.
…
The authorities said Mr. Dean did not identify himself as a police officer before firing a fatal shot at Ms. Jefferson through the window.
Ms. Jefferson died in her bedroom after officers tried to provide medical assistance, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office. Her nephew was in the room when the shooting occurred, the authorities said (Martinez “Fort” 2-4).
Chief Kraus grew emotional this week as he described how the killing would undoubtedly erode the trust that he said officers had worked to build with the people they serve.
“I likened it to a bunch of ants building an ant hill, and somebody comes with a hose and washes it away,” he said. “They just have to start from scratch.”
Chief Kraus said he had spoken to scores of officers who all said they supported the quick move to arrest Mr. Dean and charge him with murder.
[Manny] Ramirez [president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association] said he and other officers had been dumbfounded as to why Mr. Dean pulled the trigger. Mr. Ramirez added that there was “no way to explain” his actions (What 2).
Aaron Y. Dean, who is white, resigned earlier on Monday, hours before the police chief had planned to fire him, amid growing anger and frustration in the community … (Martinez “Fort” 1).
During a police department job interview in 2017, Dean said he wanted to serve the public and liked "the action and adventure" that he believed came with being an officer.
Dean said he had wanted to join the military and saw becoming a police officer as a "way to do some of those same things without having to deploy overseas."
He said he would have "no problem" using lethal force if necessary, according to records of his interview (Stanglin 2).
Relatives of Atatiana Jefferson ... have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the former officer charged in her death.
The federal lawsuit was filed Monday in the Northern District of Texas by Jefferson’s biological father, Jerome Ekpo Eschor, against the city of Fort Worth and the former Fort Worth police officer who shot Jefferson, Aaron Dean. Jefferson’s maternal aunt Venitta Body and paternal aunt Arita Eschor were also included as plaintiffs.
“Her father, Jerome, decided to bring the claim in order to help the family finally get some justice and to bring closure,” said lead attorney Tanika J. Solomon in a phone interview with NBC News. “This is not just about money. This is about vindication.”
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Monday’s civil suit, which seeks an unspecified amount of money for damages and attorney fees, alleged that Dean's conduct “demonstrated a deliberate indifference to and conscious disregard for the constitutional rights and safety” of Jefferson.
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The lawsuit also argued that the city of Fort Worth is complicit in Jefferson’s alleged murder for failing to reprimand Dean in prior instances of excessive force and for failing to adequately train officers (Sykes 1, 3).
James Smith is angry, hurt and tired. Every death of a black person at the hands of a police officer takes him back to the moment in October when Atatiana Jefferson was killed.
"I have to live with this guilt, with this cloud hanging over me for the rest of my years," he says. Because he was the reason that the police were there that night.
At around 02:30 on 12 October he was woken by his niece and nephew, who told him the front door of their neighbour's house was wide open and the lights were on.
The owner of the house, Yolanda Carr, had a heart condition and had recently been in and out of intensive care, so Smith was worried something had happened to her.
He went across the road and noticed the lawnmower and other gardening equipment were still plugged in, which he thought was strange.
So he dialled a number in the phone book to request a "wellness check" - expecting that a police officer would come out, knock on the door and check the family was OK.
He didn't know that Carr was in hospital that night and that her daughter and grandson were up late playing video games.
He was standing directly opposite the house when the police arrived.
One of the officers, Aaron Dean, had his gun drawn as he approached the front door and then walked around the side of the house to the back garden. Seconds later there was a gunshot.
"When that bullet went off I heard her spirit say, 'Don't let them get away with it,'" Smith says.
"And that's pretty much why I stayed out there all night long until they brought her out."
Police soon filled the street, but they wouldn't tell him what had happened. It wasn't until they wheeled a body out six hours later that he knew Yolanda Carr's daughter, Atatiana Jefferson, had been killed.
…
Keeping the yard straight is like a ritual in the area, he says, one that Atatiana's family had been quick to adopt. He describes Yolanda Carr as a hard-working lady. "She had some problems in life that she overcame and her home was her trophy."
Atatiana had been staying in the house while her mother was unwell. She was saving for medical school while caring for her mother and her eight-year-old nephew.
A few days before the killing there had been a car crash on the street, James Smith remembers. Atatiana rushed out to help, and she stayed with the people in the car until the ambulance came. That was just her nature, he says.
"She intended to become a doctor," he says, before going silent for a moment. "But that's not going to happen now."
Sometimes he would mow their lawn for them, Atatiana would bring him water and they'd chat. The day that she died she had been mowing the lawn herself, showing her nephew how to do it.
…
He doesn't feel that the case against Aaron Dean is being pursued properly. It troubles him that no-one from law enforcement has come to speak to him since the night of the shooting. It's his belief that if he hadn't spoken to the media the following morning, Atatiana's death might not have been investigated.
He's also upset with the pace of the trial.
"With the pandemic going on they said it could be 2021 before this thing starts. On the other hand, had it been a person of colour we'd be tried, convicted and have started our sentence already," he says.
"We're still holding our breath. Pardon the phrase, but we can't breathe" (Hegarty 1-3).
Dean resigned and was indicted on a murder charge.
The case has been delayed in court, but a Tarrant County judge recently set a tentative trial date for August [2021] - almost two years after Jefferson’s death (Woodard 3).
[Paste the following to Google to see the you-tube video of the shooting]
The night Atatiana Jefferson was killed: Bodycam footage re ...
Works cited:
Hegarty, Stephanie. “Atatiana Jefferson: 'Why I Will No Longer Call the Police'.” BBC News, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53052917
Martinez, Marina Trahan, Bogel-Burroughs, Nichols, and Mervosh, Sarah. “Fort Worth Officer Charged with Murder for Shooting Woman in Her Home.” The New York Times, October 14, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us/fort-worth-police-officer-charged-murder.html
Martinex, Marina Trahan, Bogel-Burroughs, Nichols, and Montgomery, Dave. “Woman Was Playing Video Game with Her Nephew When Shot by Fort Worth Police.” The New York Times, updated October 24, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/us/fort-worth-texas-shooting-jefferson.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Stanglin, Doug. “Texas Officer Who Shot Woman in Her Home Sometimes Dad 'Tunnel Vision,' Review Says.” USA Today, November 7, 2019. Net. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/07/fort-worth-texas-officer-review-tunnel-vision-atatiana-jefferson-death/2516382001/
Sykes, Stefan. “Family of Atatiana Jefferson, Black Woman Killed by Police, Sue City of Fort Worth and Ex-Officer.” NBC News, November 18, 2020. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-atatiana-jefferson-black-woman-killed-police-sue-city-fort-n1248161
“What We Know about the Fort Worth Police Shooting of Atatiana Jefferson.” The New York Times, updated October 24, 2019. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/aaron-dean-atatiana-jefferson.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Woodard, Teresa. “Sisters of Atatiana Jefferson Say One Year after George Floyd’s Death They Remain 'Stuck in 2019'.” WFAA, May 25, 2021. Net. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/crime/atatiana-jefferson-death-george-floyd-anniversary/287-de20d15b-5f17-492f-b4b8-a10b373f0dfe
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