Javaid and hundreds of her classmates had gathered on the grass, in the shadow of the campus’s 94-metre limestone tower, as part of a walkout against Israel’s war in Gaza.

They were hoping that their school would divest from manufacturers supplying weapons to Israel. Instead, law enforcement started to appear in increasing numbers.

By Javaid’s count, the state troopers joined at least 50 fellow officers already in place, all dressed in riot gear. The protest had been peaceful, but nerves were at a high. The troopers continued their advance.

“That was the first moment I was genuinely scared,” said Javaid, 22.

Dozens of students were ultimately arrested on April 24, as the officers attempted to disperse the protesters. Footage of the clashes between police and demonstrators quickly spread online, echoing images from other campus protests across the United States.

Yet, Texans face a unique challenge, as they contend with a far-right state government that has sought to limit protests against Israel.

In 2017, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law that prohibits government entities from working with businesses that boycott Israel, and the state has since taken steps to tighten that law further.

Abbott has also cast the current protests as “hate-filled” and “anti-Semitic”, amplifying misconceptions about demonstrators and their goals.

In addition, a state law went into effect earlier this year that forced public universities to shutter their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices.

Multiple students and employees told Al Jazeera that campuses have become less safe for people of colour as a result of the law, which forced the departure of staff DEI advocates.

Barricades sit in front of the tower on the University of Texas campus in Austin on April 30 [Nuri Vallbona/Reuters]

‘Using violence to subvert minorities’

The violence has continued at University of Texas campuses as students press forward with their protests.

On the final day of class, April 29, police used pepper spray and flash-bang devices to clear a crowd at the Austin campus, while dozens more were encircled by troopers and dragged away screaming.

Hiba Faruqi, a 21-year-old student, said her knee “just kept bleeding” after she was knocked over during a pushing-and-shoving match between students and police.

Yet she counts herself lucky for not sustaining worse injuries. It was surreal, she said, to think that her own university called in state troopers — and then had to deploy medical personnel to assist students who were hurt.

“There’s a racist element people don’t want to talk about here,” she said. “There’s a xenophobic element people don’t want to acknowledge. There are more brown protesters, which maybe emboldens the police to do things a certain way.”

As calls for divestment continue, students, lawyers and advocates told Al Jazeera they have been forced to navigate scepticism and outright hostility from the Texas government.

“Texas is known for using violence to subvert minorities,” Faruqi said. “The reason this is shaking people this time is because it’s not working.”

Protesters gather at Texas universities to call for divestment from firms linked to Israeli weapons [Tyler Hicks/Al Jazeera]

Scrutiny over university endowments

Many of the protests have zeroed in on the University of Texas’s endowment, a bank of funds designed to support its nine campuses over the long term.

The University of Texas system has the largest public education endowment in the country, worth more than $40bn.

Some of that money comes from investments in weapons and defence contractors, as well as aerospace, energy and defence technology companies with deep ties to Israel.

ExxonMobil, for example, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the system’s investments, and the company has supplied Israel with fuel for its fighter jets.

Those ties have fuelled the protests across the state’s public university campuses, including a May 1 demonstration at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Fatima — who only shared her first name with Al Jazeera, out of fear for her safety — was among the demonstrators. She wiped sweat from her brow as a young child led the crowd of about 100 in a series of chants: “Free, free, free Palestine!”

The divestment protests have largely been peaceful, Fatima explained, raising her voice to be heard above the noise.

“Over 30,000 people have been murdered,” she said, referring to the death toll in Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign is entering its eighth month.

“And our university is investing in weapons manufacturing companies that are providing Israel with these weapons. We’re going to stay here until our demands are met.”

Twenty-one students and staff members were arrested that day in Dallas. Members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine, of which Fatima is a member, spent the night outside the county jail, waiting for their friends to be released.

One protester wryly noted outside the jail that they had been arrested for trespassing on their own campus, a seemingly nonsensical offence.

In the background, a thunderstorm was beginning to rear its head, so the protesters huddled closer together under the awning.

Student protesters applaud one another as they are released from the Travis County Jail in Austin, Texas, on April 30 [Nuri Vallbona/Reuters]

Protesters receive community support

Texas officials and university administrators have justified the police crackdowns, in part, by citing the presence of outsiders with no present affiliation with the campuses involved.

But 30-year-old activist Anissa Jaqaman is among those visiting the university protests, in an effort to lend supplies and support.

Everyone has a role to play, Jaqaman explained: Her role is sometimes that of the communicator, but more often that of the healer.

She has brought water to the student demonstrators at the University of Texas at Dallas and hopes to provide a space for people to “come over and talk about how we heal”.

“This is a healing movement,” she said time and again as she spoke to Al Jazeera. “We have to carry each other.”

Jaqaman is Texas through and through: She was raised in the Dallas suburbs and is a strong advocate for her state.

“I’m a proud Texan,” she said. “I actually think that Texans are some of the nicest people in the country.”

But back when she was in college, from 2012 to 2016, Jaqaman started to use her voice to bring awareness to the plight of Palestinians.

Rights groups have long warned that Israel has imposed a system of apartheid against the ethnic group, subjecting its members to discrimination and displacement.

In college, Jaqaman’s friends often laughed at her passion. She often smiles, exuding optimism, but her voice grows serious as she talks about Palestine, as well as other issues like the scourge of single-use plastics.

“They just thought I was a tree-hugger, but for human rights,” she explained, speaking in a soft yet confident voice.

But the current war has amplified her concerns. The United Nations has signalled famine is “imminent” in parts of Gaza, and rights experts have pointed to a “risk of genocide” in the Palestinian enclave.

Jaqaman has sported her keffiyeh scarf ever since the war began on October 7, despite feeling anxious that it could attract violence against her.

“I wear it because I feel like it protects my heart, honestly,” she said. “I feel like I’m doing the Palestinian people injustice by not wearing it.”

But she has struggled to get public officials to engage with her concerns about the war and divestment from industries tied to Israel’s military. For months, she attempted to persuade her local city council that “this is a human issue, an everyone issue”, to little avail.

“Everything that we’re seeing right now is about shutting down the discussion,” she said. “If you say anything about Palestine, you’re labelled anti-Semitic. That’s a conversation-ender.”

A boy leads a crowd in pro-Palestinian chants at a demonstration in Dallas, Texas [Tyler Hicks/Al Jazeera]

Youth protesters look to the future

Students like Javaid, a journalism major in her final semester, told Al Jazeera that they are still trying to figure out what healing looks like — and what their futures might hold. In many ways, she and her friends feel stuck.

They recognise they need to take a break from scouring social media for information about the war, and yet it is all they can think about.

The usual college rites of passage — final exams, graduation and job hunting — just don’t seem as important any more.

“How are we supposed to go back to work now?” Javaid asked after the protests.

While she has treasured her time at the university, she is also highly critical of its actions to stamp out the protests. Part of the blame, she added, lies with the government, though.

“The root issue in Texas is that the state government doesn’t care,” she said.

Born and raised in the Dallas area, Javaid plans to stay in Texas for at least a little while after she graduates this month. She has mixed feelings about staying long term, though.

She would like to work in social justice, particularly in higher education, but she worries such a job would be tenuous in her home state.

Still, she feels a sense of responsibility tying her to the state. The political climate in Texas may be challenging, she said, but she has a duty — to her fellow protesters and to Palestine — to keep playing a role.

“I don’t want to jump ship and just say, ‘Texas is crazy’,” Javaid said. “I want to be a part of the people trying to make it better. Because if not us, who?”

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Police say two off-duty officers working security at Lakewood Church, one of the largest megachurches in the U.S., shot and killed the suspect. Two other people were also shot and wounded, including a 5-year-old boy who entered the church with the shooter and was taken to a hospital in critical condition.

Osteen said the violence could have been worse if the shooting had happened during the earlier and larger late Sunday morning service.

Here’s what to know about the shooting:

HOW DID THE SHOOTING UNFOLD?

The sound of gunshots inside the massive church, which was formerly the home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, startled worshippers just before 2 p.m. Sunday, around the time many people were getting ready to later watch the Super Bowl.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner did not identify the suspect at a news conference Sunday while standing near Osteen. He described the shooter as a woman in her early to mid-30s, saying she entered the church wearing a trenchcoat and backpack and armed with a long rifle, though he did not specify the exact weapon.

Finner said the woman entered the church with the young boy but did not describe their relationship. The woman began shooting and was confronted by two off-duty officers, a Houston police officer and an agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, who returned fire. Finner said the woman told officers after being shot there was a bomb but a search found no explosives.

He and other authorities at the scene praised the officers for taking down the shooter.

“She had a long gun, and it could have been worse,” Finner said. “But they stepped up and did their job.”

WHO ARE THE VICTIMS?

Authorities have not released the identities of anyone involved in the shooting.

It was unclear how the young boy, who was taken to a Houston children’s hospital, was struck by gunfire. When asked whether the boy was shot by one of the off-duty officers returning fire on the suspect, Finner said he did not want to speculate but added: “That female, that suspect, put that baby in danger. I’m going to put that blame on her.”

Authorities described the other victim as a man in his 50s who was wounded in his hip.

HOW DID WORSHIPPERS INSIDE REACT?

Alan Guity, whose family is from Honduras, has been a member of the church since 1998. He said he heard gunshots while resting inside the church’s sanctuary as his mother was working as an usher.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I yelled, ‘Mom,’” he said.

Guity, 35, said he ran to his mother and they both laid flat on the floor as the gunfire continued. Guity said he and his mother prayed and stayed on the floor for about five minutes until someone told them it was safe to leave the building. As he was led outside, Guity could see people were afraid and crying and looking for loved ones.

Guity said he and his mother tried to calm people down by worshiping and singing in Spanish, “Move in me, move in me. Touch my mind and my heart. Move within me Holy Spirit.”

WHO IS JOEL OSTEEN?

Osteen, 60, took the helm of Lakewood Church after John Osteen, his father and the church’s founding pastor, passed away in 1999. The church has grown dramatically under Joel Osteen and is regularly attended by 45,000 people weekly, making it the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Osteen is a leader of what is known as the prosperity gospel, a belief that God wants his followers to be wealthy and healthy. He is the author of several best-selling books, including, “Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential.”

His televised services reach about 100 countries and renovating his church’s arena cost nearly $100 million.

After Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in 2017, Osteen opened his church to those seeking shelter after social media critics slammed the televangelist for not offering to house people in need.

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The first flight, which Abbott’s office said left from El Paso and arrived Tuesday, was arranged a week after Chicago’s city council took new action over the busloads of migrants that have drawn sharp criticism from Mayor Brandon Johnson. The city has said bus operators began trying to drop off people in neighboring cities to avoid penalties that include fines, towing, or impoundment.

Bus operators could now face tougher penalties in Chicago for not unloading new arrivals at a designated location or failing to fill out city paperwork. Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said Wednesday that the flights were the result of Johnson “targeting migrant buses” from Texas.

The flight took off a day after Abbott signed a new law this week that would allow police in Texas to arrest migrants who illegally cross the border, ratcheting up a series of aggressive measures the state has taken in protest of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

“Until President Biden steps up and does his job to secure the border, Texas will continue taking historic action to help our local partners respond to this Biden-made crisis,” Mahaleris said.

The White House criticized the flight and accused Abbott of using migrants for politics.

“Yet again, Governor Abbott is showing how little regard or respect he has for human beings,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said in a statement. “This latest political stunt just adds to his tally of extreme policies which seek to demonize and dehumanize people.”

More than 23,000 migrants have been sent to Chicago on buses as part of Abbott’s border mission known as Operation Lone Star, according to the governor’s office.

The multibillion-dollar operation has also included stringing razor wire along the frontier, installing buoy barriers in the Rio Grande and deploying more officers. On Tuesday a federal appeals court ordered the Biden administration to temporarily halt cutting the concertina wire on the border while a legal challenge plays out.

Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the flights to his city.

Concerns have arisen about the living conditions and medical care provided for asylum-seekers arriving in Chicago, spotlighted by the death last weekend of a 5-year-old boy living at a temporary shelter for migrants.

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Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. The nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship carried no people or satellites.

SpaceX later said multiple engines on the 33-engine booster were not firing as the rocket ascended, causing it to lose altitude and begin to tumble. The rocket was intentionally destroyed by its self-destruct system, exploding and plummeting into the water.

Instead of a best-case-scenario 1 1/2-hour flight with the spacecraft on top peeling away and taking a lap around the world, the whole thing lasted four minutes. The rocket reached a maximum speed of about 1,300 mph (2,100 kph) and as high as 24 miles (39 kilometers), before going sideways and dropping.

Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site, which was off-limits. As Starship lifted off with a thunderous roar, the crowd screamed: “Go, baby, go!”

Musk, in a tweet, called it “an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for the next test launch in a few months.” SpaceX termed it a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.

In the weeks leading up to the flight, Musk gave 50-50 odds that the spacecraft would reach orbit. He stressed that clearing the launch tower and not blowing up the pad would be a win.

“You never know exactly what’s going to happen,” said SpaceX livestream commentator and engineer John Insprucker. “But as we promised, excitement is guaranteed and Starship gave us a rather spectacular end.”

At liftoff, the rocket kicked up huge plumes of sand and dust around the pad. In Port Isabel, about 10 miles (6 kilometers) away, particles covered cars and other surfaces. The only other report, said John Sandoval, assistant to the city manager, was a shattered window at a local business. “Yes, it shook, rattled and rolled,” he said of the rocket.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it would oversee the accident investigation, noting that no injuries or public property damage were reported. The agency also said that until it determines that there is no threat to public safety, Starships are grounded.

SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.

Despite the abbreviated flight, congratulations poured in from NASA chief Bill Nelson and others in the space industry. Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted, “Huge accomplishment, huge lessons, onwards to the next attempt.”

“It fell somewhere between a small step and their hoped-for giant leap, but it still represents significant progress toward a reusable super-heavy lift rocket,” University of Chicago’s Jordan Bimm, a space historian, said in an email.

At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past, present and future. NASA successfully launched its new 322-foot (98-meter) moon rocket last November on a test flight, sending the empty Orion capsule around the moon.

The stainless steel Starship rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nothing was to be saved from this test flight, with the spacecraft — if all had gone well — aiming for a watery grave in the Pacific near Hawaii.

The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fueled engines.

SpaceX has more boosters and spacecraft lined up for more test flights; the next set is almost ready to go. Musk wants to fire them off in quick succession, so he can start using Starships to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit and then put people on board.

It was the second launch attempt. Monday’s try was scrapped by a frozen booster valve.

Jason and Lisa Flores drove down from Corpus Christi to watch the launch with their daughter, and noticed something was amiss.

Lisa Flores cried seeing the liftoff and then realized, “It’s not working out the way it was supposed to.”

Elizabeth Trujillo, 13, wearing a “Star Wars” shirt and carrying toy binoculars, skipped school to see the launch from the beach with her mother and other relatives. The crowd cheered when Starship cleared the tower.

Despite the failed attempt, “it was worth it,” said Jessica Trujillo, Elizabeth’s mother. “Just hearing and seeing the view, the excitement of the crowd, it was priceless.”

“Practice makes perfect. They just got to practice some more,” she added.

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The migrants, who are in clear pens akin to cages, are seen sleeping on pads on the floor with aluminum blankets. In some instances, it appears that dozens are sharing individual pens. Most appear to be wearing masks.

A photo of a CBP overflow facility for migrants in Donna, Texas. (Office of Rep. 
Henry Cuellar, D-Texas)

Amid a significant surge of migrants to the southern border in President Biden’s first two months, some in the media have complained about a lack of access to facilities like the one in Donna.

A photo of a CBP overflow facility for migrants in Donna, Texas. (Office of Rep. 
Henry Cuellar, D-Texas)

“I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations,” award-winning photojournalist John Moore tweeted Friday. “I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now – zero access is granted to media. These long-lens images taken from the Mexican side.”

He added: “There’s no modern precedent for a full physical ban on media access to CBP border operations.”

A photo of a CBP overflow facility for migrants in Donna, Texas. (Office of Rep. 
Henry Cuellar, D-Texas)

The White House has said that it is limiting media access to border facilities in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that the Biden administration is aiming to finalize details on how the media can access border facilities like the one in Donna, Texas.

Psaki responded to the photos on Monday, as a reporter asked her whether the conditions the migrant children are being kept in represent a crisis.

A photo of a CBP overflow facility for migrants in Donna, Texas. (Office of Rep. 
Henry Cuellar, D-Texas)

“Children presenting at our border who are fleeing violence, who are fleeing prosecution, who are fleeing terrible situations, is not a crisis,” she responded. “We feel that it is our responsibility to humanely approach this circumstance and make sure they are treated and put in conditions that are safe. I will say that these photos show what we’ve long been saying, which is that these border patrol facilities are not places made for children. They are not places that we want children to be staying for an extended period of time. Our alternative is to send children back on this treacherous journey. That is not, in our view, the right choice to make.”

She continued to say that the Biden administration is aiming to ease the pressure on facilities like the one in Donna, Texas.

A photo of a CBP overflow facility for migrants in Donna, Texas. (Office of Rep. 
Henry Cuellar, D-Texas)

The photos released Monday also upset some on the right who believed Democrats are being hypocritical in saying there is no crisis currently on the southern border after sounding the alarm over the treatment of migrants under former President Donald Trump.

“Either Dems and media faked the tears and ‘outrage’ pre-Biden, or they meant it,” Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., tweeted. “If it’s the latter, where are they now? Kids are in cages. And this surge is far worse than any under President Trump.”

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Biden said the declaration, which follows a request from the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, would open up broader federal aid for immediate and long-term recovery efforts.

A presidential visit to the state is being planned for next week.

“As I said when I ran, I’m going to be a president for all Americans,” said Biden, who won November’s election without winning Texas, of his plans. “If I can do it without creating a burden for folks, I plan on going.”

Biden has asked his team to expedite Texas’s request for a disaster declaration, clearing the way for more federal resources, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters.

The White House later said in a statement that Biden called the acting administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Bob Fenton, to let him know he would approve the measure as soon as the agency forwarded a formal request.

The White House has been in touch with mayors in Texas cities, including Houston and Austin, and officials in Dallas and other counties, to make sure they were connected to Fema and had access to federal government resources, an administration official said separately.

As cold weather began to abate in Texas, power was being restored across the state, but millions of people remained without safe drinking water throughout the US south as the region struggled to recover from a crippling week of winter weather.

About 370,000 households remained without power in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi on Friday morning, with millions in the region under water-boil advisories, after record low temperatures damaged pipes and infrastructure throughout the southern United States.

People wait in line at St Elmo Brewery for free potable water in Austin. 
Photograph: Mario Cantu/CSM/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

In Texas, almost half the state’s residents, about 13 million people remained under boil advisories, with over 700 water supply systems affected, according to an update from the texas commission on environmental quality on Thursday. In Austin alone, the state’s capital, the city reported losing 325m gallons of water due to burst pipes.

In Jackson, Mississippi, most of the city’s 150,000 residents were without water on Thursday night. Jackson’s mayor, Antar Lumumba, told a press conference the city faced a shortage of chemicals to treat the water, despite pumping efforts to refill city tanks.

In Louisiana, about a million residents were without clean water on Thursday, with 98 water supply systems out across the state, according to the governor, John Bel Edwards. On Thursday, Biden approved a disaster declaration for the state. The president authorized a similar disaster declaration for Texas earlier in the week, allowing Fema to coordinate disaster relief efforts in the state.

Late on Thursday, Abbott announced the state had sought another major disaster declaration which would “allow eligible Texans to apply for assistance to help address broken pipes and related property damage”, according to a press release.

Abbott also announced he would ask the legislature “to mandate the winterization of Texas’s power system and for the legislature to ensure the necessary funding for winterization”.

The frigid temperatures have moved into the Appalachians, northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, and later the north-east as the extreme weather was blamed for the deaths of at least 58 people, including a Tennessee farmer trying to save two calves that apparently wandered into a frozen pond and 17-year-old Oklahoma girl who fell into a frozen pond.

A growing number of people have died trying to keep warm. In and around the west Texas city of Abilene, authorities said six people died of the cold – including a 60-year-old man found dead in his bed. In the Houston area, a family died from carbon monoxide poisoning as their car idled in their garage.

Shoppers at a Houston supermarket pass bare shelves. The winter weather 
has caused water and food shortages. Photograph: Go Nakamura/Reuters

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas used rolling blackouts to ease strained power grids. But the remaining Texas outages were mostly weather-related, according to the Fenton, Fema’s acting director, said on Friday that teams were in Texas with fuel, water, blankets and other supplies.

“What has me most worried is making sure that people stay warm,” Fenton said on CBS This Morning while urging people without heat to go to a shelter or warming center.

Rotating outages for Texas could return if electricity demand rises as people get power and heating back, said Dan Woodfin, the council’s senior director of system operations.

The crisis is exacerbating and demonstrating the chronic inequality in Texas and across the region. In Houston, authorities reported that the mass power and water outages led to more than 500 complaints from residents of price gouging costs for water, gas and rent, double the number of grievances lodged at the start of the pandemic, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Two of Houston Methodist’s community hospitals had no running water and still treated patients but canceled most non-emergency surgeries and procedures for Thursday and possibly Friday, a spokeswoman said.

And across Texas’s vast prison network inmates complained of sub-zero temperatures and stagnant, overflowing toilets, according to local reports.

Meanwhile, Republican senator Ted Cruz continued to face a backlash for traveling to a Mexican resort city in the middle of the crisis. Cruz returned to Texas from his very brief trip to Cancún on Thursday. He has called the trip a “mistake”.

“We’re not spending any time, energy, or breath analyzing Senator Cruz’s whereabouts or his group chat,” Psaki said.

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The noises were Dean and his partner creeping around the back of her home after they were called to investigate why her front door was open.

Dean resigned on Monday before he was fired for breaching a string of police policies in shooting Jefferson dead with a single shot, according to Fort Worth Police Chief Ed Kraus.

Jefferson’s death brought outraged calls for an investigation into Fort Worth Police, whose officers are accused by her family’s lawyer, Lee Merritt, of fatally shooting seven people in under six months.

“She heard noises coming from outside, and she took her handgun from her purse,” Jefferson’s nephew told police, according to the warrant. His name was redacted from the warrant.

“Jefferson raised her handgun, pointed it toward the window, then Jefferson was shot and fell to the ground,” the warrant said.

Dean’s partner, identified as Officer Darch, said she could see Jefferson when Dean shot her.

“She could only see Jefferson’s face through the window when Officer Dean discharged his weapon,” the warrant said.

The officers did not knock on the front door of the home or announce they were police before Dean fired his weapon, according to Kraus.

“It makes sense she would have a gun if she felt threatened or if there was someone in the backyard,” Kraus said, ending a press conference after eight minutes as he grew emotional talking about the impact of the killing on police morale.

Fort Worth has called in an independent panel of experts to evaluate the police department after the shooting.

Jefferson was killed the same month another former Texas police officer, Amber Guyger, was convicted of murdering Botham Jean, a black man, as he sat in his home eating ice cream.

Jefferson’s family has called for the swift prosecution of Dean, who was arrested on Monday and posted bond overnight.

“#AtatianaJefferson deserved to live in a world where she was safe from brutality playing video games in her home with her nephew,” Merritt tweeted.

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