Former officer Aaron Dean sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison over Atatiana Jefferson shooting

A former Texas police officer who fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson through a rear window was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years and 10 months in prison.

Aaron Dean, 38, faced up to 20 years in prison, but the jury also had the option of sentencing him to probation. The same jury that convicted him of manslaughter on Thursday also determined the sentence.

The white Fort Worth officer shot the 28-year-old black woman in 2019 while responding to a welfare check call about an unlocked front door.

His guilty verdict was a rare conviction of an officer for killing someone who was also armed with a weapon.

During the trial, the main dispute was whether Dean knew that Jefferson was armed. Dean testified that he saw his gun, while prosecutors claimed the evidence showed otherwise.

After the sentencing hearing, Dean remembered stoically as the jury confirmed the verdict before he was booked into the Tarrant County Jail.

Jefferson, pictured, was inside the house playing video games with his eight-year-old nephew and had left the door open to vent smoke from the house.

Dean shot Jefferson on October 12, 2019, after a neighbor called the non-emergency police line to report that the front door of Jefferson’s home was unlocked.

She had been playing video games that night with her eight-year-old nephew and it emerged at trial that they left the doors open to vent smoke from the burgers the boy burned.

The case was unusual for 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 previous year and resigned from the force without speaking to investigators.

Since then, the case has been repeatedly postponed amid disputes between attorneys, the terminal illness of Dean’s lead attorney, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Body camera footage showed Dean and a second officer who responded to the call did not identify themselves as police at the home.

The dean and officer Carol Darch testified that they thought the home might have been burglarized and quietly moved into the fenced-in backyard looking for signs of forced entry.

There, Dean, whose pistol was drawn, fired a single shot through the window a split second after yelling for Jefferson, who was 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 questioning by prosecutors, he acknowledged numerous mistakes and repeatedly admitted that the actions he took before and after the shooting were “more 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 acknowledged on the witness stand that he said something about the gun only after seeing it on the floor inside the house and that he never gave Jefferson first aid.

Dean joined the Fort Worth Police Department in April 2018, according to officials, and had only been on the job a year when he shot Jefferson.

Dean claimed that Jefferson (pictured) was armed when she was shot after a neighbor called a non-emergency police line to report her. The testimony contradicted that of his partner

The jury deliberated for more than 13 hours over two days before finding Dean guilty of manslaughter earlier this week.

Jefferson’s 8-year-old nephew, Zion Carr, was in the room with his aunt when he was shot.

Zion testified that Jefferson drew her gun believing there was an intruder in the backyard, but offered conflicting accounts as to whether she pointed the gun out the window.

On the opening day of the trial, Zion, now 11, testified that Jefferson always had his gun pointed downward, but in an interview that was recorded shortly after the shooting and was shown in court, he said that she had pointed it down. with the gun. in the window.

Zion Carr, 11, the nephew of Atatiana Jefferson, testified during the murder trial of former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean, who thought he was dreaming when his aunt fell to the ground after being shot through the window from his home in Texas.

Lesa Pamplin, an attorney and friend of the Jefferson family, said she was glad the jurors were taking their time.

‘These people took a good hard look at the evidence and didn’t rush it. And I’m happy, not pleased, but I’m happy that they got the manslaughter,” Pamplin said.

Another Jefferson family friend, Cliff Sparks, said The Dallas Morning News that he believes the verdict will send a message to other officers that ‘they can shoot and kill someone in their own backyard and get the lesser charge.’

“It’s not good,” Sparks said. None of this is okay.

If Dean had been convicted of murder, he would have faced life in prison. The former police officer, who had been out on bond, was booked into the Tarrant County Jail following Thursday’s verdict.