A police officer who killed an 84-year-old black woman during a drug raid in January will not be indicted, a grand jury decided after the officer testified his gun discharged accidentally.
Black leaders in Tyler, however, expressed disappointment over the Smith County grand jury's decision Friday about Kilgore officer Frank Baggett Jr., 28, after three days of investigation.Baggett, who was the last witness to testify, told the panel that Annie Rae Dixon died when his gun fired accidentally as he kicked in the door of her room.
The shooting on Jan. 29 was the third involving police within two months in Smith County and led to a large demonstration at the courthouse on Feb. 10.
Dixon, a retired maid, was in bed when Baggett and other members of a drug enforcement unit from neighboring Gregg County raided her rural home near the county line.
Authorities said the officers raided Dixon's house because an informat told them Dixon's granddaughter had sold him crack cocaine at the house.
The informant, according to records, told the officers about some of the occupants of the house but did not mention the grandmother, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia a few weeks earlier.
Prosecutors and black leaders became concerned because the raid produced no drugs or criminal charges. They also said the Dixon house was 100 feet beyond the jurisdiction of Gregg County police.
The FBI and Dixon's family have sued Baggett and the Kilgore Police Department over Dixon's death.
"Oh my, my. That's kind of a sad business I'm very disgusted," Ernest Deckerd, president of the Tyler chapter of the NAACP, said from Nashville where his group is holding a convention.
Deckerd said there would have been a demonstration if the NAACP leaders had been in Tyler.