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.
