The Texas police officer who shot and killed a black woman in her home is being held in jail on a murder charge.
Aaron Dean was arrested just hours after he resigned from the Fort Worth police force on Monday.
The city’s police chief, Edwin Kraus, told a news conference that Dean would have been fired had he not resigned.
Dean, who is white, shot 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson, who is black, through a house window Saturday after a neighbor called a non-emergency police line to report Jefferson’s front door had been left open.
Jefferson was in the house with her 8-year-old nephew.
Fort Worth police said in a statement over the weekend that officers saw someone near the window inside the home and said an officer fired after “perceiving a threat.”
Jefferson’s family has called for an independent investigation of Dean as well as the Fort Worth police force.
Body-camera footage released by police shows two officers searching around the outside of Jefferson’s house with flashlights. One of the officers can be heard yelling, “Put your hands up, show me your hands” before a shot is heard.
Following the shooting, Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price called for “justice and closure” for Jefferson’s family.
Dean had been with the Fort Worth police department since April 2018.
The shooting comes shortly after another high-profile case in Texas involving a white police officer who shot an unarmed black person. In that case, white Dallas police officer Amber Guyger fatally shot her black neighbor Botham Jean inside his own apartment after Guyger entered the apartment, mistaking it for her own. Guyger was sentenced earlier this month to 10 years in prison.
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