The father of a black woman fatally shot by a white police officer inside her Fort Worth, Texas, home has died.
A spokesman for Marquis Jefferson, Bruce Carter, told the Dallas Morning News that the father of Atatiana Jefferson suffered a heart attack and died Saturday night at a Dallas hospital. Carter told KDFW that Jefferson “just couldn’t get back from what happened with his daughter”.
The 28-year-old Jefferson was killed last month after Fort Worth police went to her home for a welfare check. An officer, Aaron Dean, was charged with murder after resigning from the force.
Jefferson, 28, was playing video games with her eight-year-old nephew in the early hours of the morning, her family’s lawyer said, when she was killed by an officer who was outside the property, had not parked in front of the house, did not identify himself and appears to have given her no time to respond to his initial command before shooting through a window.
Body camera footage released by police shows an officer with a flashlight walk around the house. He appears to catch sight of someone inside, yells, “Put your hands up, show me your hands,” then fires a shot through a window less than a second later.
The family’s attorney, Lee Merritt, said at the time that the doors of the house were open so a cool breeze would enter the house while Atatiana, who was known as “Tay”, played video games with her eight-year-old nephew, Zion.
“I ask myself, what would have happened if that little boy went to the window instead of his auntie?” Merritt asked. “He saw her when she fell.”
Jefferson was a biology graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans and reportedly worked in pharmaceutical equipment sales. Family members said she had decided to move into the property in order to look after her ailing mother.
After his daughter’s death, Marquis Jefferson sought a temporary restraining order to gain control over the funeral arrangements from his daughter’s aunt. A deal was eventually reached and the funeral was rescheduled.
