Dec. 20 (UPI) — A grand jury on Friday indicted a former Fort Worth, Texas, police officer on a murder charge for shooting a woman in her home.
Aaron Dean, 35, resigned from the Fort Worth Police Department in October after he fatally shot 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson at her mother’s home.
Police responded to the home after a neighbor reported seeing the front door ajar and the lights on at 2:30 a.m. During a welfare check, Dean shot Jefferson through a bedroom window.
Body cam footage shows officers shouting at Jefferson from her back yard and ordering her to put her hands up, then shooting through her window in seconds.
Jefferson “was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew, when they heard a noise in the backyard,” the family attorney, Lee Merritt, said at the time.
Merritt said Friday that Jefferson’s family was relieved to have an indictment, but “remain cautious that a conviction and appropriate sentence is still a long way away.”
Dean was arrested and freed on $200,000 bail in October.
