Ex-Cop Who Fatally Shot Atatiana Jefferson Sentenced To Nearly 12 Years In Prison

The former Texas police officer who shot Atatiana Jefferson through a window of her home in October 2019 was sentenced to 11 years and 10 months in prison Tuesday.

Dean faced two to 20 years in prison on the manslaughter conviction. Prosecutors had asked jurors to sentence him to the maximum. Jurors deliberated for about 13 hours before it handed down the sentence.

The defendant, Aaron Dean, was found guilty of manslaughter Thursday in the fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson, 28, who had been playing video games at home with her 8-year-old nephew. Dean was responding to Jefferson’s home after a neighbor had called a nonemergency line around 2 a.m. to say he had noticed an open front door.

Dean who took the stand in his own defense, said he thought he was responding to the scene of a burglary and saw an armed figure in a window of Jefferson’s home.

“I’m just looking right down the barrel of the gun, and when I saw the barrel of that gun pointed at me, I fired a single shot from my duty weapon,” Dean said on the witness stand.

Prosecutors said Jefferson acted reasonably and was within her rights to protect herself and her nephew, Zion Carr, when she heard noises outside her home in the middle of the night and got her gun, as she did not know police officers were outside. 

Jefferson’s sister, Ashley Carr, delivered a victim impact statement. “My sister did not do anything wrong,” Carr said. “She was in her home, which should have been the safest place for her to be.”

Adarius Carr, Jefferson’s oldest brother, testified that his sister was a caring woman who moved back home to Fort Worth and cared for her nephew because the young boy’s mother and grandmother were both in the hospital with heart problems.

Unfortunately, her mother passed away in the home where Jefferson was gunned down and her father died weeks after her murder.

Jefferson graduated from Xavier University in Louisiana with a degree in chemistry and was planning on attending medical school.