Yolanda Carr, whose daughter Atatiana Jefferson was killed by a Fort Worth police officer, has died
FORT WORTH, Texas — Yolanda Carr sobbed from her hospital bed after a Texas grand jury indicted a former Fort Worth police officer who shot her daughter, Atatiana Jefferson, in her home.
“Thank you, Jesus. Even though I know we have a long way to go, at least we got the charge on him,” Carr said to CNN affiliate KTVT about the man charged with killing her 28-year-old daughter and caretaker. “One step at a time, I guess.”
Nearly three weeks later, Carr died Thursday at her Fort Worth home, civil rights attorney S. Lee Merritt said in a statement on behalf of the family.
Fort Worth responded to a medical call at Carr’s home around 11 a.m, police Sgt. Chris Daniels told CNN. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner will determine Carr’s cause and manner of death, Daniels said. There is no indication of foul play, he said.
Carr had recently become ill, Merritt said in a tweet. The statement did not give her cause of death or age.
“Police brutality impacts entire families, communities and generations. There is no doubt Ms. Carr’s recovery was complicated by the tragedy of her daughter’s death and the difficulty associated with the ongoing fight for justice. We will continue the fight in her honor,” Merritt said in the statement.
Carr’s death is the third in the Jefferson family in nearly four months.
Jefferson’s father, Marquis A. Jefferson, suffered a cardiac arrest and died weeks after former Officer Aaron Dean fatally shot his daughter in October. He was 59.
Jefferson had moved home to take care of her ailing mother, Merritt said.
On the night she died, Jefferson was looking after her nephew while her mother was in the hospital.
Jefferson was playing video games her nephew when Dean and another officer arrived at the home. A concerned neighbor had called the non-emergency police number when he saw the home’s exterior doors open at a late hour.
As officers walked around the house in the dark, Jefferson heard a noise in the back yard, pulled out a gun from her purse and pointed it at the window, police said.
Dean yelled “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” before he fired through the window, hitting Jefferson, body camera footage showed.
Jefferson died in front of her nephew. Neither of the officers identified themselves as police.
Dean, who resigned from the force, was charged with murder in October. His attorney, Jim Lane, told CNN then the former officer is remorseful. “My client is sorry, and his family is in shock,” Lane said.
A Texas grand jury indicted Dean on a murder charge in December. Lane couldn’t be immediately reached Thursday.
Carr gave all of her children names that began with the letter A and called them the “A-Team,” Merritt said after Jefferson’s death.
Carr was ailing and couldn’t make her daughter’s funeral in late October. So, a pastor read a letter from the woman.
“You often said you were going to change the world,” the Rev. Jaime Kowlessar read.
“I think you still will,” Carr said in the letter.