A Tarrant County jury ordered former police officer Aaron Dean to spend nearly 12 years behind bars on Tuesday for the 2019 death of Atatiana Jefferson and prosecutors and family members are finding special significance in the sentence.
Dean, a white police officer, fatally shot the 28-year-old Black woman in her home on Oct. 12, 2019, while investigating an open structure call. Dean entered the backyard and said when he looked through a window he saw a silhouette of a person and the barrel of a gun. Dean fired once, fatally wounding the woman on the other side of the glass.
After two days of deliberations the jury, the same one who rejected a murder charge in favor of a lesser charge of manslaughter the week before, sentenced the former officer to 11 years, 10 months and 12 days in prison.
Tarrant County Prosecutors Dale Smith and Ashlea Deener said Tuesday afternoon they believe there was some significance to the duration of time the jury ordered Dean to spend behind bars.
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"We did not get a specific. I mean, 10 months, she was killed in October, the tenth month. Twelve days, she was killed on the twelfth. I do not know if that was the message that the jury intended to send but that is what we assumed when we heard those numbers," Smith said.
"We also know, obviously, that Zion is 11 years old so we felt with, 11 years, 10 months and 12 days that that was based on that, but we didn't ask them specifically," Deener added.
Jefferson's sister, Ashley Carr, acknowledged the significance of the sentence during a gathering outside the family's home on E. Allen Avenue late Tuesday afternoon.
"Eleven years. That's the same age as Zion. Ten months, 12 days, that's the day that it happened. It's a message in this. It might not be the message that we wanted and the whole dream but it's some of it. It is some of it," Carr said. "We're not going to forget Atatiana."
