Officer indicted on murder charges for shooting Atatiana Jefferson in her home

(Image credit: Stewart F. House/Getty Images.)

published 20 December 2019

Former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean was indicted by a grand jury Friday for the death of Atatiana Jefferson, whom he fatally shot in her own home in October while she played video games with her young nephew. Dean was previously charged with murder, an unusual outcome in cases of police violence, and indictment is the next step toward trial.

Jefferson's family's lawyer, S. Lee Merritt, celebrated the news on Twitter but cautioned that the legal battle is far from over. The family "remain[s] cautious that a conviction and appropriate sentence is still a long way away," he wrote.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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