(DALLAS MORNING NEWS) — Search “Amber Guyger” on social media, and you’ll see post after post of the same photo: 26-year-old Botham Jean in sunglasses, smiling alongside three women.
The photo was taken from Jean’s Instagram account, and amateur internet detectives have reposted it endlessly to claim that Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger knew Jean before she killed him in his own apartment Thursday night.
People may insist the woman on the left is Guyger, but it’s one of Jean’s colleagues at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a company spokeswoman said.
The Dallas Morning News is not publishing the widely shared photo because the women have nothing to do with the case.
The photo shows Jean, a risk assurance associate at the company, with a group of friends. None of them works in law enforcement, the spokeswoman said.
Rumors have been swirling that Guyger was dating Jean. But the two did not know each other, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Dallas Morning News on Sunday.
The official, who is not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said no evidence has turned up that they’d ever even met.
The official’s comment backs up what one of Guyger’s fellow officers told The News on Saturday.
Guyger had moved into South Side Flats near the Dallas police station only about a month ago.
She was off duty but still in uniform after working a shift when she arrived Thursday night at the sprawling apartment complex, police said. She told police she mistakenly thought Jean’s apartment was her own and fatally shot him.
Guyger, who was hired at the Dallas Police Department in November 2013, wasn’t injured. Authorities said more police arrived within four minutes after the shooting was reported. Jean was pronounced dead at Baylor University Medical Center.
Dallas police had planned to seek an arrest warrant for Guyger and charge her with manslaughter. But Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall asked the Texas Rangers to take over the case, and the investigation has slowed.
No arrest warrant had been issued for Guyger by Sunday.
Jean’s family is calling for Guyger to be arrested and charged so the case can begin its way through the court system.
Attorney S. Lee Merritt, whose law firm is representing Jean’s family, said Guyger should be “treated like every other citizen, and where there is evidence that they’ve committed a crime, that there’s a warrant to be issued and an arrest to be made.”
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(2)The post Botham Jean and Officer Amber Guyger ‘didn’t pose together for a photo’ appeared first on St. Lucia News Online.