On October 14, 2019, two officers arrived at Atatiana Jefferson’s home after a neighbor noticed her doors opened at 2 a.m. and called a non-emergency police number to conduct a wellness check.
When the officers arrived, they allegedly did not announce themselves. Jefferson pointed a gun at the window when Aaron Dean yelled at her to “put her hands up.”
He fired through the window and killed Atatiana, 28, who had been playing video games with her nephew at the time.
Body camera footage later revealed that neither of the two officers had announced themselves as police.
In the weeks following Atatiana’s death, her father, Marquis Jefferson died of cardiac arrest. Yolanda Carr, her mother, who she was caring for, died within a few months.
Relatives said the shooting led to her parents’ unfortunate deaths.
Dean eventually resigned from the Fort Worth Police Department before being indicted on murder charges. He’s currently out on a $200,000 bail.
Jefferson’s biological father, Jerome Eschor, her aunt, Venitta Body, and another relative, Arita Eschor filed the wrong death lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas.
A report by CNN states that her relatives’ “complaint accuses the city and the former officer of being ‘deliberately indifferent to protecting Atatiana Carr a/k/a Atatiana Jefferson from harm by systematically failing to provide adequate training and supervision to its officers, upheld [her] constitutional rights, and providing urgently needed medical care.”
The complaint went on to state, “Defendants acted with high disregard for the rights of others, and their conduct was extreme and unreasonable under the circumstances.”
The coronavirus pandemic has delayed the murder case against Dean and is not expected to resume until at least August 2021.
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