A little over four years after Zion Carr witnessed a Fort Worth, Texas, police officer fatally shoot his aunt in the boy’s grandmother’s home, the city has approved a $3.5 million settlement to be given to his guardians for his current care and to be placed in a savings plan to set up for his college education and his adult life.
The young boy will receive a lump sum first, a college package and annuity payments until he turns 40.
The announcement was made Tuesday, Nov. 28, by the Fort Worth City Council, the governing body that approved the award.
Zion, who was 8 years old when ex-cop Aaron Dean shot Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, testified during a 2022 trial that the officer fired into Jefferson’s mother’s home through a window in the early hours of Oct. 12, 2019.
Police had arrived at her residence after a neighbor noticed her door was open. The boy and his aunt were having a family night, playing video games and preparing food. Carr was cooking when the burgers were burned, prompting them to open the doors to help vent out the smoke.
Dean was one of the two officers who responded and never announced themselves at the front door. Instead, they walked the perimeter of the residence, causing Jefferson to become suspicious when she heard something. When Jefferson armed herself and approached the window to investigate the sound of rustling from outside, Dean hastily shot her. He claimed that he saw her with a weapon.
However, prosecutors argue that both the evidence and testimony suggest a different sequence of events. Body camera footage revealed the officer instructing her to raise her hands, but he failed to identify himself as a police officer before firing a single shot through the window, killing her in front of her nephew.
Zion stated during the testimony that Jefferson retrieved her firearm, believing there was an intruder in the backyard.
Dean was convicted last December by a Tarrant County jury of…
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