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FORT WORTH (USA) Dec. 21 (AP) – A former Texas trooper who shot Atatiana Jefferson through the back window of her home in 2019 was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years in manslaughter. Years and 10 months in prison.
Aaron Dean, 38, faces up to 20 years in prison, but jurors also have the option to sentence him to probation. The jury that found him guilty of manslaughter on Thursday also returned a verdict.
White police officers in Fort Worth shot and killed the 28-year-old black woman while responding to a call about the front door being open. His guilty verdict was a rare case of an officer being convicted of killing someone who also had a gun.
During the trial, the main controversy was whether Dean knew Jefferson was carrying a weapon. Dean testified that he saw her weapon; prosecutors claim the evidence suggests otherwise.
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Dean shot Jefferson on Oct. 12, 2019, when a neighbor called the non-emergency police hotline to report that the front door of Jefferson’s home was open. She had been playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew that night, and it was discovered during the trial that they had left the door open to let out the smoke from the boy burning the hamburgers.
The relative speed with which the Fort Worth Police Department released video of the shooting and arrested Dean amid public outrage was unusual in the case. He had completed the police academy the previous year and quit the force without speaking to investigators.
Since then, the case has been repeatedly delayed due to legal disputes, the terminal illness of Dean’s lead attorney and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Body camera footage showed Dean and another officer who answered the phone without identifying themselves as officers at the house. The dean and Sergeant Carol Dutch testified that they believed the house might have been burglarized and moved quietly into the fenced-in backyard looking for signs of forced entry.
There, Dean, with his gun drawn, shot the window momentarily after yelling at Jefferson inside to put her hands up.
Dean testified that when he saw Jefferson pointing the barrel of a gun at him, he had no choice. But under questioning by prosecutors, he admitted many mistakes, repeatedly acknowledging that his actions before and after the shooting were “worse police work.”
Dutch had his back to the window when Dean fired the gun, but she testified that Dean never mentioned seeing the gun before pulling the trigger and did not say anything about the weapon as they stormed the house to search it .
Dean admitted on the witness stand that he only said something after seeing the gun on the floor inside the house, and that he never gave Jefferson first aid. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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