Austin, Dec 12 (AP) A former Texas police officer took the witness stand on Monday in his murder trial for fatally shooting a Black woman through a rear window of her home in 2019.

Aaron Dean testified that "this jury needs to hear from me and hear the truth” on the fourth day of his trial in the killing of Atatiana Jefferson.

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His testimony came more than three years after the white Fort Worth officer shot the 28-year-old dead while responding to a call about an open front door.

The testimony is Dean's first public statement since the Fort Worth Police Department released body-camera video of the shooting and arrested him on a murder charge within days of the Oct. 12, 2019 killing. He quit the force without speaking to investigators.

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Since then, Dean's case was repeatedly postponed amid lawyerly wrangling, the terminal illness of Dean's lead attorney and the COVID-19 pandemic.

His lawyers have argued Dean saw Jefferson holding a gun before shooting, while prosecutors claimed the evidence showed he didn't see it.

Tarrant County prosecutors rested their case Wednesday after about two and a half days of testimony.

Dean shot Jefferson after a neighbour called a nonemergency police line to report that the front door to Jefferson's home was open.

She had been playing video games that night with her nephew and it emerged at trial that they left the doors open to vent smoke from hamburgers the boy burnt.

Bodycam footage showed that Dean and a second officer who responded to the call didn't identify themselves as police at the house.

Officer Carol Darch testified last week that she and Dean thought the house might have been burglarised and quietly moved into the fenced-off backyard, guns drawn, looking for signs of forced entry.

There, Dean fired a single shot through the window a split-second after shouting at Jefferson, who was inside, to show her hands.

Dean's lawyers said he opened fire after seeing the silhouette of Jefferson with a gun in the window and a green laser sight pointed at him.

Darch's back was to the window when Dean shot, but she said he never mentioned seeing a gun before he pulled the trigger and didn't say anything about the weapon as they rushed in to search the house.

Jefferson's 8-year-old nephew witnessed his aunt be shot from inside the room. Zion Carr testified that Jefferson took out her gun believing there was an intruder in the backyard, but he offered contradictory accounts of whether she pointed the pistol out the window.

Carr, now 11, testified on the trial's opening day that Jefferson always had the gun down, but he said in a interview that was recorded soon after the shooting and played in court that she pointed the weapon at the window. (AP)

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