A Texas jury has found former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger guilty of murdering her neighbor in his own apartment, NBC reported.
In an incident that captured headlines across the nation, 31-year-old Guyger claimed that she had fatally shot 26-year-old Botham Jean after mistaking him for an intruder in her apartment when she had actually entered his apartment.
In emotional testimony, Guyger described fearing for her life when she saw the apartment door open and encountered Jean.
She said she had just gotten home from a 13-1/2 hour shift, still in uniform but off-duty, and parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage at her apartment complex. Her own apartment was on the third floor, directly below Jean’s apartment.
When she found that the door to the apartment was ajar, she said, “I was scared. Your heart rate just skyrockets. She said that when she saw a “silhouette figure” in the apartment, she drew her weapon and shouted “Let me see your hands! Let me see your hands!”
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Guyger testified that Jean appeared to be approaching her, saying “Hey! Hey! Hey!” aggressively when she shot him.
“I was scared that he was going to come at me and kill me,” she said. She fired two bullets, striking Jean in the chest. Guyger said that she didn’t realize she was in the wrong apartment until she saw an ottoman in the middle of the floor and that the television was on.
Jean had been sitting on his couch, watching TV and eating ice cream when Guyger entered. “I never wanted to take an innocent person’s life,” she said. “I’m so sorry. This is not about hate — it’s about being scared.”
Prosecutors hammered Guyger’s decision-making during the encounter.
They claimed she was distracted, missing several clues along the way that she was in the wrong place, and that she need not have even entered the apartment and instead could have radioed for assistance or used her stun gun or mace rather than using deadly force.
“When you aimed and pulled the trigger at Mr. Jean, shooting him in center mass exactly where you are trained, you intended to kill Mr. Jean,” said lead prosecutor Jason Hermus when cross-examining Guyger. “I did,” she responded.
Guyger was fired from the Dallas Police Department days after the shooting.
Nevertheless, protests erupted around the city afterwards, with large crowds decrying police brutality and racial bias. Jean’s family questioned whether Guyger would have opened fire if Jean had not been black.
Guyger’s trial lasted seven days.
Legal experts had expected the jury to take some time to reach a verdict, especially after Judge Tammy Kemp allowed them to consider Texas’s “castle doctrine,” a stand-your-ground law, in the case.
However, the jury returned its guilty verdict less than 24 hours after starting its deliberations. Jean’s mother threw her arms up after hearing the verdict, and prosecutors and family members hugged, while Guyger and her mother wept.
Guyger faces a potential life sentence after her conviction for murder.
