Chilling bodycam footage shows moments after cop fatally shot neighbor
Jurors at the trial of a white former Dallas cop who fatally shot her black neighbor in his apartment while off duty saw disturbing police video of the deadly encounter that shows the victim getting CPR.
“I thought it was my apartment,” Amber Guyger, 31, is seen saying in the chilling footage, which was recorded on the body camera of one of the officers responding to her 911 call Sept. 6, 2018.
“Top left! Top left!” the frantic officer says when her colleagues ask her where Botham Jean was hit.
The point-of-view video shows Officer Michael Lee administering chest compressions on the mortally wounded man, who is covered in blood, a few minutes before paramedics arrive.
Guyger, who was later fired from the force, seems panicked when she appears briefly in the footage.
Lee testified that despite life-saving efforts, Jean didn’t open his eyes or otherwise communicate with the first responders.
During opening statements Monday, prosecutors said that Jean, 26, an accountant who grew up in the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia, was sitting in his living room eating a bowl of ice cream when Guyger entered his apartment and shot him while in uniform but off duty.
The prosecutors argued that the officer should have noticed she was on the wrong floor — and contend that she was distracted by a phone and text conversation with a colleague with whom she had a sexual relationship.
Guyger’s lawyers have insisted that she fired in self-defense based on the mistaken belief that she was in her home and that Jean was a burglar.
She has told authorities that she parked on the fourth floor of her garage — rather than the third floor, where she lives — and found the apartment’s door ajar.
Senior Cpl. Dale Richardson testified that he was told during the probe that Guyger’s keys were found dangling from Jean’s door.
He said that when tested, her key made a light on the lock blink red and it would not operate, while Jean’s key made the lock blink green and make a whirring sound that indicated it was operational.
Guyger’s attorneys have said she was able to enter the apartment because the door wasn’t locked.
On Tuesday, police Detective Eddie Ibarra testified that Guyger had no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of the shooting — marking the first time her toxicology results have been publicly revealed.
Jurors also heard a recording of Guyger’s frantic 911 call, in which she said, “I thought it was my apartment” nearly 20 times.
“I’m gonna lose my job,” she says in the recording, which was previously obtained by a Dallas TV station. “I am going to need a supervisor.”
An emergency worker who took the call testified Tuesday that Guyger placed it just before 10 p.m. and requested an ambulance.
The jury will decide whether Guyger committed murder, a lesser offense such as manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide — or no crime at all.
With Post wires
