Jennifer Emily, Lavendrick Smith and Dana Branham
Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Officers scrambled up stairs and down hallways, breathing hard as they rushed toward Botham Jean, who lay dying last September on the floor of his Dallas apartment. First responders frantically took turns performing CPR, even as Jean lay unconscious with only a faint pulse.
On Tuesday, jurors in Amber Guyger’s murder trial watched body camera footage from Sept. 6, 2018, the night that Guyger, an off-duty Dallas police officer, fatally shot Jean in his apartment.
Guyger, 31, has said she mistook Jean’s apartment for her own that night and shot the 26-year-old thinking he was a burglar. Her defense has argued that she “firmly and reasonably” acted in fear of her own life when she shot her upstairs neighbor, while prosecutors questioned how she missed several visual cues that indicated she was in the wrong apartment.
Guyger, who was later fired from the force, looks panicked when she appears briefly in Officer Michael Lee’s body-cam footage.
“I thought it was my apartment. I thought it was my apartment,” she repeats as Lee moves past her, putting on a pair of blue gloves.
“Chief, hey, can you hear me?” one officer says to Jean, who was on the floor in light-colored shorts and a dark T-shirt. “Can you hear me?”
Lee testified that despite officers’ efforts, Jean didn’t open his eyes or otherwise communicate with first responders.
The lights in the apartment were on by the time first responders arrived, and Lee testified that Jean’s TV and laptop also were on and emitting light. The footage shows a bowl of vanilla ice cream on his ottoman and an ironing board and iron set up nearby.
Jean’s family, including his brother and sister, left the courtroom before that video was played. But Jean’s teenage brother, Brandt, returned by the time it was shown again. He sat with his chin in his hands as the courtroom watched officers frantically try to save his brother’s life.
First responders asked Guyger to leave the apartment, prosecutor Jason Hermus said. He showed jurors a photo of the uniformed officer standing in the hallway on her cellphone, as other officers worked inside to save Jean.
Hermus asked Lee, the officer whose body cam footage recorded Jean undergoing CPR, about a hypothetical break-in where an officer comes upon a burglary in progress and notices someone inside a residence.
“You have two choices,” Hermus said. “I want you to presume that you can safely … reposition to a position of cover and concealment. You have that option. Or you can just shoot them dead and worry about that later. What do you do?”
“Cover and concealment,” Lee answered.
“Is that because of the sanctity of human life?” Hermus asked him.
“Yes, sir,” Lee said.
Lee, in response to questions from Guyger’s defense, said he was in the same police academy class as Guyger. He said she seemed “very emotional” the night of the shooting.
Robert Rogers, one of Guyger’s attorneys, asked Lee whether it was important to be able to see a suspect’s hands to determine whether that person presented a deadly threat, and whether he would be prepared to use deadly force to protect himself if he walked into his home and believed an intruder was there.
Lee testified that he would.
Rogers also seemed to suggest that an officer might react differently to a perceived intruder while on duty, as opposed to an off-duty officer who’s at home.
“When you get a burglary call, you know that there’s something that has initiated a warning to you that there is a potential burglar in the location,” he began a question to Lee. “So if you get to that location and there’s an open door, you’re already prepared for that?”
Lee agreed.
Sgt. Breanna Valentine, an officer who encountered Guyger as she stood in the hallway outside Jean’s apartment, also took the stand Tuesday. She said once she learned Guyger was responsible for the shooting, it was her responsibility to take Guyger to her patrol car and isolate her from the situation.
But that wasn’t what happened, prosecutors said.
In a hearing that took place outside the presence of the jury, Hermus showed footage of several officers interacting with Guyger before and after Valentine placed her in the squad car. Some of them are Guyger’s friends and fellow officers, Hermus said, and Guyger is seen hugging at least one of them.
At some point, Dallas Police Association president Mike Mata is seen removing Guyger from the squad car, footage shows.
Valentine told the court that Mata, her superior, then instructed her to turn off a squad car camera that normally captures the movements and conversations of a person placed in custody inside a police car, and she did.
Valentine later said she would’ve left the squad car camera running if she knew Guyger had been off-duty during the shooting.
Hermus said turning the camera off and allowing Guyger to interact with other officers gave her preferential treatment that wouldn’t have been given to an ordinary person in police custody.
“I think this investigation, from the very beginning, treated Amber Guyger differently because she was a police officer,” Hermus said outside the presence of the jury.
Rogers said his client was waiting for an attorney and that Mata, the police association president, was protecting her right to an attorney. The other officers interacting with Guyger was outside of her control, he argued.
State District Judge Tammy Kemp, who is presiding over the trial, ruled that the prosecution couldn’t ask Valentine about “irregularities” of Mata and Guyger interacting in the presence of the jury.
Earlier Tuesday morning, jurors heard the 911 call that Guyger made after the shooting.
The off-duty Dallas police officer repeatedly told the operator that she had made a mistake. Jean’s father Bertrum Jean, put his arm around his wife, Allison, as the audio played in the courtroom.
“I’m an off-duty officer,” Guyger said in the recording. I thought I was in my apartment, and I shot a guy thinking it was my apartment.”
Audio from the 911 call was previously obtained by WFAA-TV, but Tuesday was the first time it was officially released.
“I thought it was my apartment,” Guyger said repeatedly through heavy breaths in the audio. “I could’ve sworn I parked on the third floor.”
Also during Tuesday’s testimony, a police detective said Guyger had no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of the shooting. The results of her blood draw had not been publicly released until then.
Another officer showed footage of investigators testing Guyger’s and Jean’s keys in his door: When the correct key is used, a light blinks green. If the key isn’t recognized, the light blinks red.
Guyger’s key was found hanging from the door when police arrived, and her defense has said she was able to get into Jean’s apartment because the lock wasn’t installed properly and didn’t lock when the door closed like it should have.
A manager for the South Side Flats complex where Guyger and Jean lived said she was unaware of any issues with Jean’s door.