‘Tay’ Jefferson’s family is our family now. They need Fort Worth’s prayers, and help.
Atatiana Jefferson’s family is our family now.
We have an 8-year-old nephew who needs care. We have a sister and a mother recovering from surgeries.
We have a family lost without a pre-med youngest daughter, all because one of our city employees was careless.
Atatiana won’t be here to take care of them all anymore.
Now, that’s up to Fort Worth.
“Tay” is not gone. The happy 28-year-old will be with us forever, and with the spirit of every young high school science scholar who is dreaming against the odds that she will be able to stay in a small private university, get a biology degree and save enough pennies to go to medical school.
But she lost her own life Oct. 13 to a Fort Worth police officer who blundered around her house to a bedroom window and shot her. A neighbor had simply reported that her front door — but not the screen door — was standing open.
Now, we’re responsible.
It’s our job to hire officers. And it’s our job to train them to know when to charge forward and when to hang back.
Second-year Officer Aaron Dean, 35, loomed outside Atatiana’s window in a neighborhood where flashlights and strangers outside your window at 2:25 a.m. are never good news.
She reached for a pistol. We don’t know whether Dean saw it.
All we can see on the video is that he shouted, “Put your hands up!” and fired only one shot.
The temptation is to compare Jefferson’s death to the Sept. 6, 2018, Dallas shooting of a Church of Christ song-leader, Botham Jean. But Jean was shot in his own home by an officer who was off work.
Dean was on the job. His duty was to keep our city safe.
Now, our city grieves.
To me, Jefferson’s death and the citywide sorrow afterward compare much more closely to the 2004 deaths of a father, his two children and another girl in a way-overfilled Water Gardens pool.
The pool in the downtown park was supposed to be 3½ feet deep. When 8-year-old visitor Lauren Dukes of Chicago went under, it was 9 feet deep. She and all her rescuers drowned.
Mayor Mike Moncrief, proponent of the now-mocked phrase “the Fort Worth way,” did not just express sympathy. He actually spoke at the victims’ Chicago funeral.
“We share your loss, we share your tears and we share your feelings of helplessness,” he said as mourners said, “Amen.”
Moncrief went on: “An old Texas Ranger once told me, ‘You do the right thing, for the right reason, because it is the right thing to do, not because everyone is watching.’ I can promise you, Fort Worth will do the right thing.”
Ten months later, the family and city reached a settlement.
The time has come again for Fort Worth to do the right thing.
This story was originally published October 18, 2019 at 8:29 AM.
