‘I did a fine job’: In testimony, Aaron Dean grades his policing the night he shot Atatiana Jefferson

Defense attorneys in the murder trial of former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean began to present their case with testimony from Dean on Monday morning in Tarrant County’s 396th District Court.

Dean has never previously spoken in public about the case, and his testimony as the first defense witness was a surprising move.

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Dean was indicted on a murder charge in the death of Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman. Dean, who is white, shot Jefferson through a window of her home about 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2019, while he and another officer were responding to a neighbor’s call about open doors at the house on East Allen Avenue.

Dean testified that he and the other officer, Carol Darch, looked through the open front and side doors. He turned on his body camera while they were looking in the front door, he said. The glass storm doors were closed. Dean said that they saw things “strewn all over the floor” and open drawers and cabinets and thought the house looked “ransacked” but that they did not see signs of forced entry or hear anything inside.

The officers went to search the back yard, and Dean testified that in the back bedroom window, he saw the silhouette of an adult person whose “upper arms were reaching for something or grasping something.” He could not tell the race of the person or if it was a man or a woman, he said.

“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 said he drew his gun and shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” He did not identify himself as a police officer.

“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.”

As his gun recoiled, the light mounted on it shone back in his face, Dean said.

“When my vision cleared, I saw the person we know now was Miss Jefferson,” Dean testified, sniffling and with his voice breaking slightly. “I heard her scream and saw her fall ... And I knew I had shot that person.”

Dean said that the video recorded by the body camera on his shoulder didn’t show everything he could see with his eyes.

Dean said that after the shooting, he tried to open the window to get inside but couldn’t so he and Darch ran to the front of the house, entered and quickly scanned the house for threats on their way to the back bedroom, where Jefferson lay face down on the floor.

Dean said he did not immediately provide first aid to Jefferson because he had lost his medical kit a few days earlier. He said he instead picked up Jefferson’s gun from the floor between her feet because he had been trained that the first thing he should do after a shooting is move the weapon away from any person.

Dean admitted he did not attempt CPR. He said he rolled Jefferson over and pressed an afghan to her chest to try to stop the bleeding but did not do so right away when he entered the room.

Darch took Jefferson’s 8-year-old nephew Zion Carr outside while Dean stayed in the room. Zion was in the bedroom playing video games with his aunt at the time of the shooting and was the only witness inside the house. He has said Jefferson heard noises in their back yard, grabbed her handgun from her purse and looked out the window. Last week, he testified that Jefferson held the gun down by her side. In an interview hours after the shooting, Zion said his aunt pointed the gun at the window.

When the officers went in the room, Dean said, “To my right, I see a kid,” and “I’m thinking who brings a kid to a burglary? What’s going on?”

Cross-examination

The prosecution cross-examined Dean for over an hour in the morning and continued after the lunch break. Assistant District Attorney Dale Smith reviewed Dean’s body-camera video and hammered Dean on what he did wrong in his response to the call. Smith repeatedly got Dean to acknowledge examples of “bad police work.”

Still, when asked how he’d grade his performance, Dean gave himself a B, saying that while there were things he could have done better, he thinks “I did a fine job.”

Smith asked why the officers did not call for backup or guard the exits to prevent anyone from escaping if they thought a burglary might be in progress. Dean said he wanted to inspect all around the house and determine how many officers they might need before calling for backup.

At one point, Smith asked, “As soon as you saw the barrel of the gun, you decided to pull the trigger and take whoever was on the other side of that window’s life?” Dean answered yes.

Smith questioned why Dean didn’t tell Darch he had seen a gun if he believed they might be in danger when they entered the house. Dean said he didn’t tell Darch about the gun until he found it at Jefferson’s feet.

“You didn’t seem too concerned for her (Darch’s) safety, if in your mind there’s burglars in that house with guns,” Smith said.

Smith questioned why the officers didn’t take more time to examine each door, the garage and the cars in the driveway before entering the gate into the residents’ private back yard. The video was one minute and 17 seconds from the time Dean turned on the camera to when he shot Jefferson, Smith said.

Smith also questioned why the officers said they didn’t want to knock on the door and give away their position, but they turned on flashlights and walked in front of doors and windows that police would consider “a fatal funnel,” exposing them to any threat that might be inside the house.

The neighbor who made the call, James Smith, and three members of his family were watching from their porch across the street, but Dean said he didn’t notice them.

Dean said more than once, “I was as apprehensive and cautious as I was about every call.”

“I’m trying to think what I could have done better and I can’t come up with anything,” he said at one point.

Smith later pointed out that Dean had announced “Fort Worth police” when responding to other burglary and open structure calls. Dean had been patrolling on his own for about a year before the October 2019 shooting.

Asked if Jefferson would still be alive if the officers had announced themselves, Dean said, “Maybe.”

Smith asked if there would have been anything wrong with calling for backup and waiting for more officers to arrive before completing the search. He pointed out testimony that the officers had not heard anyone call for help and had no reason to believe someone’s life was in danger.

They could have called for backup, Dean acknowledged, “other than that we’re short-staffed and always try to do as much as we can with two officers.”

Dean said he thought Darch was behind him in the yard because that’s how they were trained to search but he couldn’t say for sure where she was.

Dean appeared increasingly frustrated and defensive on the witness stand. At one point, Smith asked why he appeared to be looking to his attorneys for help. Dean answered he was trained to address the room and “that’s basic public speaking.”

Dean’s testimony continued for about 45 minutes after the lunch break. Smith asked if Dean intended for “the person on the other end of that bullet to die?” Dean said, “I intended to stop the threat” and said he knew it was a possibility the person would die.

Smith pointed out that the video shows Dean did not do anything to try to help Jefferson for a full minute after entering her bedroom.

“A full minute she lay there bleeding, at your hands, without you doing anything to try to save her life?” Smith asked.

“If that’s what the clock says,” Dean said. “... I had no idea how much time was passing.”

On redirect by the defense, Dean said he didn’t realize until he watched the video later how much time had passed.

When he entered the room, Dean testified, he found Jefferson’s gun, which had a green laser sight that was turned on. Dean did not mention seeing the green light through the window.

In the room, Dean testified, “I saw the green laser and you hear me go ‘phew’ because at that moment I’m thinking that’s how close we came to dying.” Prosecutors have argued Dean had not previously seen the gun and seemed relieved to find it.

Asked by Smith if he had a choice to do anything differently, Dean said, “I suppose we could have just stayed home but, no.”

Smith asked if that was a joke and Dean said no. Asked by the prosecutor, Dean acknowledged that a person’s home should be a safe place and that there’s nothing wrong with a resident having a gun to protect their home.

Smith asked Dean if one of his loved ones were home alone with a child and heard noises and saw flashlights outside, would he want that person to go to the window with a gun? Dean answered, “Maybe.”

Video expert

Dean’s testimony concluded about 2 p.m.

The next witness is Grant Fredericks, a forensic video analyst who is an expert for the defense.

Fredericks said video evidence should be “interrogated” like a human eyewitness to determine its accuracy and is testifying about the capabilities of the type of body camera used by the Fort Worth Police Department.

The trial so far

Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, before Dean’s testimony began, Judge George Gallagher denied the defense’s motion to direct a verdict of not guilty.

The prosecution rested its case on Wednesday after about two-and-a-half days of testimony last week, surprising many observers in the community. Some questioned at that point whether prosecutors had done enough to present a strong case against Dean.

The prosecution could still call its own expert witnesses this week as a rebuttal to the defense witnesses’ testimony.

The defense is trying to prove that Dean saw Jefferson point a gun at him through the window and that he shot her in self-defense. The prosecution has presented evidence that Dean never said he saw a gun, didn’t identify himself as a police officer and didn’t give first aid to Jefferson to try to save her life.

Dean was indicted on a murder charge but jurors likely will be able to consider lesser charges such as manslaughter. A murder conviction carries a sentence of five years to life.

Last week, jurors watched Dean’s body-camera video for the first time, which shows him shout at Jefferson to put her hands up and then he immediately fires once, shooting her in the chest.

The other officer who went to the house with Dean, Carol Darch, testified last week that they thought the home might have been burglarized and were searching for signs of forced entry. Darch said she had her back to Dean and was directly behind him when he fired the shot and she did not see Jefferson holding a gun.

Dean did not give a statement to police after the shooting. He resigned two days later and was arrested later that night.