FORT WORTH — Newly built houses are nestled among older, some dilapidated, homes on East Allen Avenue. Some lawns are manicured while others are unkempt.
“It’s not what you think it is,” Annie Rico, 36, said of her neighborhood. Rico’s home is adjacent to the fenced-in backyard where a former Fort Worth police officer fired a lethal shot, killing a young Black woman, Atatiana Jefferson, more than three years ago.
Rico said the area’s “look” contributes to the mischaracterization — played up by the ex-cop’s lawyers at his trial — that it is unsafe. Aaron Dean’s attorneys defamed the quiet, family neighborhood, residents say, when they called it rough and prone to crime.
Rico said she never had problems here, and neither did Jefferson — until Dean killed her inside her mother’s home. Jefferson was 28 and an aspiring doctor.
Dean, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 12 years in prison for manslaughter. He was called to the home after a neighbor noticed lights on and doors open in the early morning hours of Oct. 12, 2019. Dean and a fellow officer testified the home appeared ransacked and they believed it had been burglarized. They did not announce their presence in case a burglar was inside, according to testimony, before walking around the back of the house. Dean spotted Jefferson through the window, yelled commands and fired within less than a second.
Carol Darch, the officer with Dean that night, said the predominantly Black neighborhood was victimized by property and drug-related crimes. Prosecutor Ashlea Deener told jurors Dean was a “power-hungry” officer with tunnel vision who had a “preconceived notion” that it was a neighborhood plagued by crime.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing Jefferson’s family, said at a news conference Tuesday evening that “when the court referred to this community as a ‘rough community’ it was a euphemism for ‘Black community.’”
“Because those two words are often used interchangeably — a Black community or a problem or troubled community — then we allow certain forms of policing that are a lot more militant and a lot more deadly than we do in other communities,” he said.
“And so that’s a part of the key problem here, that we need to stop classifying communities that are predominantly Black as inherently dangerous.”
James Smith, the concerned neighbor who called a nonemergency police line, told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday outside Jefferson’s family home it is “not a rough neighborhood.” Smith, who has lived on East Allen Avenue for decades, scoffed at the defense lawyers’ insinuation the area is dangerous.
A single bouquet of flowers rested against a powder blue porch railing at the Jefferson family’s modest one-story home on East Allen Avenue. Two banners, reading “We Want Justice” and “Pull Up for Tay,” fluttered from the gable roof in the brisk December wind. There are reminders of Jefferson sprinkled down East Allen Avenue; street signs designate it “Atatiana Jefferson Memorial Parkway.”
The home and an empty field to its right are now home base for Jefferson’s namesake foundation aimed at getting urban youths into STEAM fields, her sister Ashley Carr said. Carr harkened back to when she testified the doors were always open. Zion Carr, Jefferson’s nephew, testified the pair left the doors open to air out smoke after they burned hamburgers at dinner. Jefferson and Zion, then 8 years old, were up late playing video games the morning of the shooting.
Jefferson graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana and wanted to cure diabetes. She moved into the Fort Worth home to care for her ailing mother and Zion, whose mother was also in poor health, while saving for medical school.
A mural memorializing her at the corner of East Allen and Evans avenues pictures her glowing face and wide eyes next to a DNA strand. Wilted flowers lie on a bench in front of the mural, which reads “#SAYHERNAME.”
Rico’s house faces a community center Smith is working to have renamed in Jefferson’s honor, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram previously reported. The nearby park sits on a hill overlooking the downtown skyline — less than five miles from the Tarrant County courthouse where a jury convicted and sentenced Dean.
Tweety Angwenyi, co-owner of HustleBlendz coffee shop, less than a mile from Jefferson’s family home, said the neighborhood is misunderstood.
“The people of this community are some of the most loving and peaceful people that I’ve met,” he said. “It’s a far cry to call this community a bad community. It’s a community that is ridden with poverty, yes. But the people here love each other.”
Angwenyi, who followed the case closely and has an ear to the community’s heartbeat, said people struggle “to wrap their heads around” Jefferson’s killing, and he feels the public outcry over her death has waned.
“There is a sense of numbness that comes from this community because we’ve seen this over and over again,” he said, “so she becomes just another name to some of the people.”
He said Dean’s sentence holds Fort Worth police and the former officer accountable, remarking, “That is a form of justice.”
Key questions for jurors during the guilt-innocence phase of the trial were whether Dean saw Jefferson’s gun — which she grabbed after hearing a noise in the backyard — and if he was justified as a police officer to use deadly force. He testified that he saw the weapon.
Consquella Harmon, who owns Queen Nomrah Cannabis Dispensary, called the sentence disappointing and said it “is not enough for a life.”
“Nothing is going to bring her back, but that is not justice,” she said.
Harmon wanted the jury to return the maximum sentence. Jurors weighed a sentence of two to 20 years or probation. Dean’s defense lawyers pleaded for probation, while prosecutors said Dean’s actions did not warrant mercy.
“Who gave Atatiana Jefferson mercy?” Harmon asked. “Who gave Botham Jean mercy? Who gave all the other names mercy?”
Botham Jean, a Black man, was fatally shot by an off-duty Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger, in his apartment. Guyger, who is white, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years. Guyger, who was still in uniform, testified at her trial she believed she was entering her apartment and Jean was an intruder.
Estella Williams, president of the Fort Worth-Tarrant County branch of the NAACP, which is in the neighborhood, said in a written statement Dean’s actions “greatly affected” Jefferson’s family and the entire Fort Worth community, and the emotional impact would be felt for “years to come.”
“His actions continue to perpetuate an uneasiness about the level of safety in our own homes,” Williams said. “The fact that the decision on sentencing is at the higher end of the spectrum of punishment is proof that we are making progress toward judicial equity.”
Harmon and Angwenyi’s businesses are located in an Evans Avenue business park — a few blocks from the neighborhood’s old commerce epicenter, marked by a brown “Welcome to Historic Southside” sign shaded by an overpass.
The nondescript, easy-to-miss sign on East Rosedale Street and the above Interstate 35W divides Fort Worth’s south side. To the west are well-maintained sidewalks, iron lamp posts and rows of shopping centers flanked by towering modern apartment complexes.
To the east is a modest downtown square just past the intersection of Rosedale and Evans. Some of the buildings are shuttered, and few cars line the street. Angwenyi said the neighborhood is a food desert, devoid of its once-flourishing business scene — the so-called Black Wall Street of Fort Worth, Harmon said.
Arnaldo Pellot, who lives west of Jefferson’s family home, said he feels safe and his neighbors are welcoming. Pellot, 34, moved into a newly built home in 2020.
“The community is kind of on edge of what’s coming,” Angwenyi said. He added: “People are worried about whether the history of this neighborhood will continue.”
According to the city’s website, a developer has been pegged to build an “urban village,” complete with housing, green space and a grocery store. Ashley Carr said at the news conference the neighborhood is “progressive” and new people are moving in.
“We need more people who are unafraid to go into the desert and look for water,” Angwenyi said, “and to build up some of the establishments that are here because this was once a staple.”
____
