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Aaron Dean, the former police officer who shot and killed Atatiana Jefferson in 2019, received an 11-year, 10-month prison sentence after a Fort Worth jury unanimously convicted him of manslaughter last week.
In 2019, a neighbor called a nonemergency police line, requesting a wellness check on Jefferson’s mother’s home, where Jefferson was watching her nephew. Aaron Dean, 38, a white police officer, responded to the call and shot Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, through the window. He resigned from the Fort Worth Police Department days later.
The shooting came less than two weeks after former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of 26-year-old Botham Jean in his Dallas home. Guyger said she mistook Jean’s apartment for her own, one floor below, and shot and killed him after entering it.
Despite Dean’s manslaughter conviction, he received a longer prison sentence than Guyger. Under the Texas Penal Code, the prison sentence for manslaughter is between two and 20 years.