Texas family seeks answers after white police officer kills black woman inside her home
- The officer, who has been put on administrative leave, was responding to a neighbour’s call when he shot and killed Atatiana Jefferson
A white police officer who killed a black woman inside her Texas home while responding to a neighbour’s call about an open front door “didn’t have time to perceive a threat” before he opened fire, a lawyer for the woman’s family said.
“You didn’t hear the officer shout, ‘Gun, gun, gun,’” lawyer Lee Merritt said after viewing video taken from a Fort Worth officer’s bodycam during Saturday’s shooting of Atatiana Jefferson, 28. “He didn’t have time to perceive a threat. That’s murder.”
Her family told KXAS television that Jefferson was watching her 8-year-old nephew when she was killed early Saturday.
The Fort Worth Police Department said in a statement that officers saw someone near a window inside the home and that one of them drew his duty weapon and fired after “perceiving a threat”. The video released by police shows two officers searching the home from the outside with flashlights before one shouts, “Put your hands up, show me your hands.” One shot is then fired through a window. The officer does not identify himself as police in the video.
“It’s another one of those situations where the people that are supposed to protect us are actually not here to protect us,” said Jefferson’s sister, Amber Carr.
“You know, you want to see justice, but justice don’t bring my sister back,” she said.