On October 12, 2019, a white Fort Worth, Texas police officer, Aaron Dean, shot and killed 28-year-old Atatiana Koquice Jefferson (1991–2019) in her mother's home while she was babysitting her 8-year-old nephew and playing video games. A neighbor had called the non-emergency police number, asking for a welfare check because the front door had been left ajar in the early hours of the morning. According to police body camera footage, Dean and another officer quietly moved around to the back of the house, but Dean did not identify himself before firing the shot that killed Atatiana. Her nephew said when Atatiana heard someone at the back door, she took a handgun from her purse, which police said was within her rights to protect herself. Just days after the shooting, Dean was arrested, although he had resigned from the police department before the arrest.
On December 20, 2019, a Texas grand jury indicted Dean for murder.
Atatiana, who grew up in Dallas, graduated in 2014 from Xavier University of Louisiana with a degree in biology/pre-med and had been working in sales for a pharmaceutical equipment company. At the time of the shooting, she was living with her mother, Yolanda Carr, providing care for her following surgery. Her mother died in January 2020. Her father, Marquis Jefferson, had died earlier, in November 2019, less than a month after Atatiana was shot and killed.