Guyger (left) and Botham Jean
(DAILY MAIL) — Ex-Dallas cop Amber Guyger was allegedly texting her police partner while she was on the phone to 911 to report that had shot her neighbor before deleting the messages in the hours that followed.
The 31-year-old is on trial for the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Botham Jean last year after she said she mistakenly entered his apartment thinking it was her own.
During opening statements on Monday, prosecutors said that Guyger was in a sexual relationship with her police partner Martin Rivera and that she had texted him to say ‘I’m f**ked’ and that she needed him in the minutes after she shot Jean.
She allegedly sent the two text messages to her partner while she was simultaneously on the phone to 911 as Jean was bleeding to death on his floor.
Prosecutors said Guyger had also been speaking on the phone to her partner just moments before the shooting, had sent him sexually explicit texts and Snapchats earlier in the day and had made plans to meet up with him later that night.
Guyger deleted the text messages in the hours after the fatal shooting, according to prosecutors.
She wasn’t arrested until 72 hours later.
Dallas County assistant district attorney Jason Hermus showed the bright red doormat that was outside Jean’s apartment. In comparison, he said Guyger did not have any doormat as he argued that she should have noticed it wasn’t her apartment
Dallas County assistant district attorney Jason Hermus, who said Guyger’s partner would testify in the trial, argued that the messages were relevant to showing her mental state before and after the shooting.
The defense, however, had earlier argued that the material was not relevant and could be prejudicial.
Hermus told jurors that Guyger had worked a long day but that it was primarily office work following her 13-1/2 hour shift.
He said there was no evidence that Jean ever posed a threat to Guyger.
Hermus called Jean ‘a wonderful, decent, kind man’ and said that he was eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream when Guyger entered his apartment.
Prosecutors tried to poke holes in Guyger’s argument that she thought she had entered her own apartment and that Jean was an intruder.
Hermus pointed out that the view from the parking garage was different, the door numbers were wrong and that Jean had a bright red door mat outside his apartment.
He told the jury that when Guyger got to her apartment complex, she parked on the fourth floor instead of the third floor, where she had lived for two months.
When she arrived at what she thought was her unit, she failed to notice the bright red semi-circle welcome mat in front of Jean’s apartment, he said.
Jean’s apartment was also unlocked, messy and smelled of marijuana, three more signs that should have tipped Guyger off that it was not her apartment, Hermus said.
Despite the clues, she still burst through the door and opened fire, striking Jean once in the chest as he watched television and ate a bowl of vanilla ice cream.
‘He was in the sanctuary of his home doing no harm to anyone,’ Hermus said. ‘There he lie on his back in his home bleeding to death alone with his killer.’
The case has attracted intense scrutiny for its strange circumstances and as one in a chain of shootings of black men by white police officers.
Lawyers for Guyger are likely to argue she fired in self-defense based on the mistaken belief that she was in her own apartment and that Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, was a burglar.
The case may hang on whether the jury believes that this was a reasonable mistake. Twelve jurors and four alternatives were selected to hear the case earlier this month but their demographics aren’t yet public.
Guyger was off duty but still in uniform when she shot Jean in his home on the evening of September 6, 2018.
She told investigators that after a 15-hour shift she parked on the fourth floor of her apartment complex’s garage – rather than the third floor where she lived – and found the apartment’s door ajar.
Believing she was at her own apartment and seeing a silhouette of a figure who didn’t respond to verbal commands, Guyger said she fired two shots, killing him.
‘I thought it was my apartment,’ she said nearly 20 times in a 911 emergency call as she waited for emergency responders to arrive.
‘I’m an off-duty officer. I thought I was in my apartment and I shot a guy thinking he was, thinking it was my apartment.’
Throughout the five-minute phone call, Guyger cursed and cried.
‘I’m f****d. Oh my God. I’m sorry,’ she could be heard saying.
Throughout the call, she also spoke to Jean, called him ‘bud’ and encouraged him to stay alive.
Prosecutors are expected to grill Guyger on how and why she mistook Jean’s fourth-floor apartment for her own on the third floor.
Neighbors had already contradicted her version of events by claiming to have heard arguing before the fatal shooting.
One neighbor said they heard a woman in the hallway knocking on a door and yelling: ‘Let me in, let me in.’
Another neighbor then heard gunshots and afterwards claimed to have heard a man shouting: ‘Oh my God. Why did you do that?’
Guyger was only arrested 72 hours later and then charged with just manslaughter.
It sparked anger in the African-American community, which saw the case as potentially another one of a white police officer getting off lightly for killing a black man.
The department took two weeks to fire Guyger despite charging her with manslaughter after Botham’s death.
Following the backlash and a grand jury investigation, Guyger was charged with first-degree murder. The charge is punishable under Texas law with up to life in prison.
The jury will have to decide whether Guyger committed murder, a lesser offense such as manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, or no crime at all.
Jean was a native of St. Lucia who worked in Dallas for an accounting and consulting firm.
He had come to the US in 2011 after winning a place at Harding University in Arkansas.
He studied business administration and accounting and management and graduated in 2016. PwC hired him out of college as a risk assurance associate.
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