Police body camera footage played to the jury during ex-cop Amber Guyger’s murder trial shows first responders desperately performing CPR on her neighbor while she stands outside on her phone after fatally shooting him.
Guyger 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 when she was off-duty from the Dallas Police Department.
The jury on Tuesday was shown footage from a body camera worn by one of two officers who arrived at the apartment after Guyger called 911 to report the shooting that night in September 2018.
Officers could be seen running towards Jean’s apartment as Guyger screamed out that she was off-duty. Guyger was standing near the front door when the officers arrived and could be heard saying: ‘I thought it was my apartment’.
The footage showed the two officers immediately rendering CPR to Jean who was shown lying on the floor surrounded by blood.
Guyger appeared to be pushed out of the apartment while the officers gave Jean first aid. Prosecutors then showed another body cam image that showed Guyger standing in hallway outside the apartment looking at her phone as CPR was being administered.
Amber Guyger was shown (left) in police body camera footage played to the jury during her murder trial on Tuesday as first responders arrived to the Dallas apartment where she shot her neighbor Botham Jean last year
Guyger was captured on an officer’s body cam standing in the corridor outside on her phone as CPR was being given to Jean inside, according to prosecutors
Officer Michael Lee, whose body cam was shown to the court, was questioned by the prosecution and said Jean was not responsive when they were performing CPR.
He said he and his partner did not stop performing first aid until they were relieved by paramedics.
Earlier, the jurors were played the 911 call Guyger made to dispatchers about the shooting.
In the 911 call, Guyger tells the dispatcher that she shot Jean because she thought she was in her own apartment.
In the call, Guyger says ‘I thought it was my apartment’ nearly 20 times. She also says: ‘I’m gonna lose my job’ and ‘I am going to need a supervisor.’
‘I’m f****d. Oh my God. I’m sorry,’ Guyger says in the recording.
Throughout the call, she also spoke to Jean, called him ‘bud’ and encouraged him to stay alive.
Prosecutors said on Monday that Jean was sitting in his living room, eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream when Guyger walked into his home and shot him.
Dallas County assistant district attorney Jason Hermus told jurors that Guyger had worked a long day but that it was primarily office work during her 13.5 hour shift.
He said there was no evidence that Jean ever posed a threat to Guyger.
The jury on Tuesday was shown footage from a body camera worn by one of two officers who arrived at the apartment after Guyger called 911. Guyger is shown on the right as she left the apartment when officers started performing CPR
The body cam footage showed Guyger meeting the two officers at the door of Jean’s apartment. She was standing near the front door when the officers arrived and could be heard saying: ‘I thought it was my apartment’
Amber Guyger, 31, 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 when she was off-duty from the Dallas Police Department. She is shown arriving at court on Tuesday
Prosecutors said on Monday that Jean was sitting in his living room, eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream when Guyger walked into his home and shot him
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 lay on his back in his home bleeding to death alone with his killer.’
Guyger’s attorney rejected the prosecution argument that there were unique signs that would have signaled to her that she was on the wrong floor.
In fact, he said, the identical look of the apartment complex from floor to floor often led to confusion among tenants, with dozens regularly parking on the wrong floor or attempting to enter the wrong apartment.
Rogers said the floors of the parking garage were not clearly marked so it was understandable when Guyger, tired from a long shift, pushed open a door and believed an intruder was inside.
Guyger ‘was on autopilot,’ he said of her entrance to Jean’s apartment. ‘She had tunnel vision.’
Guyger told investigators she mistakenly entered the apartment of Jean, which was one floor above her own, when she returned home from work on the evening of September 6, 2018
Guyger was off duty but still in uniform when she shot Jean in his home (above) on the evening of September 6, 2018
Prosecutors have said Guyger was on the phone with her police partner Martin Rivera, who she was having a sexual relationship with, for 16 minutes as she headed back to to her apartment that night in September 2018.
They told jurors that Guyger and Rivera had plans to meet up later that night.
Rivera, however, denied during his testimony on Monday that he had made any plans to rendezvous with Guyger later that night.
Prosecutors argue that Guyger was distracted by her phone conversation with Rivera when she mistook Jean’s apartment for hers and entered, believed him to be an intruder and shot him.
When questioned about what their lengthy phone call was about, Rivera said he believes it was mostly about police work but his memory of the call was hazy.
Prosecutors had earlier revealed that the two had exchanged sexually explicit messages and images earlier that day.
She also allegedly sent 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 that after Guyger shot Jean, she deleted the logs of her text exchanges with Rivera from her cellphone.
Rivera said he didn’t not know why she had done that but admitted that he had also deleted their text exchanges.
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.
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.