Atatiana Jefferson, Killed by Fort Worth Police, Honored at Funeral

DALLAS — When Atatiana Jefferson was shot in her home by a police officer this month, her death became a national symbol of the need for police accountability in minority communities and helped highlight a history of problems within the Fort Worth Police Department.

But on Thursday, Ms. Jefferson’s family and friends were remembering her for what she was to them: a hands-on aunt who took her nephews to arcades and playgrounds, a pet lover who could not say no to animals in need, even once adopting a wild rabbit, and a pillar of family life who, at 28-years-old, put her own life on pause to move in with her sick mother.

“Whoever she really cared for, she went all in for it — people and animals,” said her sister, Ashley Carr.

Ms. Jefferson’s funeral was taking place in Dallas on Thursday morning, after being rescheduled amid a family dispute. Ms. Jefferson’s father, Marquis Jefferson, had argued in court that he should have the authority to make funeral and burial arrangements; he later came to a confidential agreement with Ms. Jefferson’s mother, Yolanda Carr, who has been mourning her daughter while hospitalized with health problems.

The funeral, which was open to the public, drew a crowd to Concord Church, a sleek, modern church in southwest Dallas. A large photo of Ms. Jefferson’s rested next to sprays of flowers and an open coffin.

Though her death had set the Fort Worth community on edge, igniting protests and renewed tensions with city leadership, the mood was quiet and somber ahead of the ceremony. Mayor Betsy Price was in attendance and a handful of uniformed Fort Worth police officers mingled with the crowd.

Ms. Jefferson, who was black, was shot in her home by a white police officer in the early hours of Oct. 12, after her neighbor called a nonemergency police line asking officers to check on the house because he had noticed that the doors were open, unusual for the middle of the night.

Ms. Jefferson was home, playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew. It had been a difficult week: Her other sister, Amber Carr, had been recovering from heart surgery, and her mother was also in the hospital. Ms. Jefferson, who often played disciplinarian to her nephew, teaching him how to mow the lawn and creating a structured schedule to help him get ready for school in the mornings, was playing the role of the fun aunt that night, staying up late to play “Call of Duty.”

When two officers responded around 2:30 a.m., they did not announce themselves as the police as they peered into the home and crept around the yard. After hearing noises outside, Ms. Jefferson grabbed a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her nephew told the police.

When one of the officers, Aaron Y. Dean, approached a back window and saw Ms. Jefferson inside, he shouted, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” Almost immediately, he fired a single fatal shot through the window. Mr. Dean, 34, later resigned from the department and was charged with murder.

Ms. Jefferson, who was known by her nickname “Tay,” had been part of what her family called the “A-team” — four siblings whose given names all started with the letter “A.” She was the youngest, with big dreams, and she worked hard to attend college at Xavier University of Louisiana, where she graduated with a degree in biology in 2014. She hoped to one day become a doctor.

“She was part of the first generation of people in my family to go to college,” said Ashley Carr, 35, who lives in Houston and works as a budget analyst for Houston Independent School District. “There were plenty of days of struggling, plenty of days of eating ramen noodles for dinner. But that wasn’t a deterrent for her.”

Recently, Ms. Jefferson had been selling medical equipment while studying and saving up to apply for medical school, her sister said. But after their mother got sick, Ms. Jefferson agreed to move from Dallas, where she had been living with a roommate, to Fort Worth, where she moved in with her mother, other sister and nephews, who are 4 and 8.

She taught the 8-year-old how to dress himself in the mornings and get ready on time for school, and took the 4-year-old to an indoor playground for his birthday, where she showed him how to go down a slide, her family recalled. Their bond was so close, “sometimes people think that they are her kids and not mine,” her sister, Amber Carr, said at a news conference earlier this month.

Ashley Carr, who does not have children of her own, recalled how she and Ms. Jefferson had bonded over their “fur babies,” which included Ms. Jefferson’s current brood of three cats and two dogs. The sisters also dabbled in following the stock market together. “We were like, ‘Did you see such and such went down today about 10 points?’” she said. “We don’t have any money in any of it, but it was just the point of that was our camaraderie.”

Now, Ashley Carr has been left to make frequent trips to the house in Fort Worth where her sister was shot. She has been feeding and looking after Ms. Jefferson’s pets, including the dogs, Olive and Little Bit. She plans to bring the pets back to Houston to stay with her.

“It’s so wrong,” she said. “Think about all the times you’re at home, sitting on the couch, watching Netflix and you heard something. It could have been anybody. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. I can’t even say wrong place, wrong time, because she was in her house.”

Manny Fernandez reported from Dallas and Sarah Mervosh from New York. Ilana Panich-Linsman contributed reporting from Fort Worth.