Dallas Officer who Fatally Shot Man in his Apartment Found Guilty

Emilyanne Richart, Reporter

Amber Guyger, the Dallas police officer who fatally shot her neighbor when entering his apartment claiming that she thought it was hers, has been convicted guilty, a jury found Tuesday, after the high-profile seven-day trial. Guyger’s lawyers claimed that she was exhausted and scared when she heard someone inside the apartment she mistakenly took as her own. But, prosecutors noted, why did she proceed to enter the apartment when her police training says to take cover and call for backup when confronting a burglar?

Guyger claims to have opened the door, saw a “silhouette figure” in the dark apartment and feared for her life, thinking of him to be a burglar. Instead, the “silhouette figure” was innocent African-American accountant Botham Jean, who was eating ice cream while watching TV on the couch. She said she asked to see his hands, but the silhouette just walked toward her. She fired two shots, aiming to kill, she admitted, even though police officers are told to shoot to wound.

Yet another question was risen: How could she not realize that the apartment wasn’t hers as soon as she reached the door?

Prosecutors reasoned that she should’ve noticed many distinguishing factors of the apartment, such as the illuminated apartment numbers of 1478 instead of 1378 and the red doormat. Yet she didn’t notice it due to the sexually explicit phone conversation she was having with her partner in the police force.

“I shot an innocent man,” Guyger cried out during her testimony, the first time the public had heard from her since the shooting.

“The jury is out,” one of Jean family attorneys, civil rights lawyer Lee Meritt told reporters as the jury deliberated, “and what they take back to that jury room, in our opinion, is the decision of the value of black life.”