‘Is That Good Police Work?’ Prosecution Hammers Aaron Dean As He Testifies In His Defense

By Harriet Ramos.

As the mur­der tri­al of for­mer Fort Worth police offi­cer Aaron Dean entered its fourth day Monday, Dean took the wit­ness stand to tes­ti­fy in his defense and faced tough ques­tions from the pros­e­cu­tion. Monday morn­ing was Dean’s first time to speak pub­licly about the case. “Because this jury needs to hear from me and hear the truth,” Dean said at the start of his tes­ti­mo­ny. Dean recount­ed the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Oct. 12, 2019, and the call that took him to the home on East Allen Avenue where he shot Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, through her bed­room win­dow around 2:30 a.m. Dean and anoth­er offi­cer, Carol Darch, were respond­ing to a neighbor’s call about open doors at the house It was dark on the street, Dean said. He and Darch went to the wrong house first and had to go back to one of the police cars and get the cor­rect address. Dean said they could see the front door of the house was open, though the glass storm door was closed. He doesn’t remem­ber hear­ing any­thing and said he didn’t see signs of forced entry. According to Dean, cup­boards and draw­ers were open and items were “just strewn about inside” the house. It looked to him like some­one had gone through the house look­ing for valu­ables, he testified.
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Dean said he was think­ing “that we had a pos­si­ble bur­glary at that time.” While look­ing inside, Dean switched on his body cam­era. Darch wasn’t wear­ing a body­cam. She said when she tes­ti­fied Tuesday, on the sec­ond day of the tri­al, that she had report­ed her cam­era miss­ing and was wait­ing for a new one to be issued. When they got around to the side door, Dean tes­ti­fied, there was a screw­driv­er near the base of the door, which he thought could have been used in a bur­glary attempt, and lawn equip­ment on the ground. He said what he saw there rein­forced the offi­cers’ mis­tak­en per­cep­tion that they were deal­ing with a bur­glary in progress. When they entered the back yard, Dean said, he went to check the bed­room win­dow. The screen looked intact. He said he looked down to check for pry marks. “As I looked through that win­dow,” Dean said, “low in the win­dow I saw a per­son.” Dean said he just saw a tor­so and “the upper arms were mov­ing” like some­one was reach­ing for some­thing. Dean couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman or what race the per­son was, he testified.

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“I thought we had a bur­glar, so I stepped back, straight­ened up and drew my weapon and then point­ed it towards the fig­ure,” Dean said. “I couldn’t see that person’s hands.” Dean, who did not iden­ti­fy him­self as a police offi­cer, shout­ed, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” “I need­ed to see that person’s hands because the hands car­ry weapons, the hands are the threat to us,” Dean tes­ti­fied. “As I start­ed to get that sec­ond phrase out, ‘Show me your hands,’ I saw the sil­hou­ette … I was look­ing right down the bar­rel of a gun,” Dean said. “When I saw the bar­rel of that gun point­ed at me, I fired a sin­gle shot from my duty weapon.” The light mount­ed on his gun shone in his face when the gun recoiled, Dean said, but when his vision cleared he saw a per­son. Dean said he saw Jefferson fall and heard her scream. “I knew that I had shot that per­son,” Dean said, his voice break­ing. Read the full sto­ry here; https://​news​.yahoo​.com/​g​o​o​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​i​o​n​-​h​a​m​m​e​r​s​-​a​a​r​o​n​-​2​3​0​6​4​3​2​1​7​.​h​tml