Trial of Amber Guyger: The cop who shot Botham Jean after confusing his apartment with his own "made unreasonable mistakes," said the prosecutor

A former Dallas officer who says that she is fatal Shot on a black man without weapons in his own home after confusing his apartment with his own, committed a series of "unreasonable errors" and was more worried about how the incident would affect her than the man who was not. she killed, said Monday a prosecutor in his opening statements.

Amber Guyger, who is white, is on trial for the murder of Botham Jean, 26, last year.

Guyger was returning to the Dallas apartment complex where she lived in an apartment on a floor different from Jean's after having worked for six and a half hours on September 6, 2018, a prosecutor said. Guyger was on leave but was still in uniform when the shooting took place. She told investigators that she had parked on the fourth floor of the garage of her apartment complex – rather than on the third floor, where she lived – and had found the door ajar. l & # 39; apartment.

Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean nation of Saint Lucia, "was doing no harm to anyone, which was his way of doing things," Dallas County Assistant Attorney Jason Hermus said in an opening statement. He noted that Jean was in his living room eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream when Guyger walked into the apartment just above his apartment.

Hermus said Guyger had called 911 after shooting Jean, but during the call, he seemed to be more worried about herself than for the fatally injured man. During the call, we can hear Guyger say that she shot a man because she thought that he was in his apartment and that she repeated that She was going to lose her job.

"She is also worried or more worried about how this will concern her than this poor guy sitting next to her," Hermus said.

The case has sparked scrutiny nationally for his strange circumstances and as a member of a series of shootings on black men by white policemen. Guyger was fired after Jean's death.

Guyger's lawyers claim to have fired self-defense based on the mistaken belief that she was in her own apartment and that Jean was a burglar.

But speaking Monday, Hermus said Guyger had missed the obvious signs that the apartment was not his. Holding a red carpet that Jean kept in front of his door, he said that Guyger had no carpet in front of his apartment. He also stated that Guyger had kept at home a large table that would have been immediately visible from the front door, which Jean did not have.

"She does not recognize all these things she is aware of and that failure costs [Jean] his life, "said Hermus.

A defense lawyer said that Guyger made a mistake that he described as horrible and tragic, but innocent. Robert Rogers said that the apartment complex was "confusing" and that it was not unusual for residents to mistakenly try to enter other people's homes. He said that Guyger was exhausted and that he was "autopilot" after a long day of work and that he had not noticed that the apartment was not the his before having opened fire, fearing for his life because Jean was coming to join her.

"She's beginning to understand that she's approaching Mr. Jean's body, what a horrible, horrible mistake she's just made," Rogers said.

Rogers added that Guyger immediately called the emergency medical service and that he had left the apartment only to show the officers in charge of the intervention where he was. He added that Guyger, who pleaded not guilty, would defend his own defense.

On the day of the shooting, Guyger had exchanged sexually explicit text messages with his Dallas Police Department partner, Martin Rivera, with whom she had been romantically involved for about a year, prosecutors said. During the preliminary proceedings, prosecutors and defense counsel quarreled over whether these messages should be on file.

A few minutes later, Guyger was on the phone with Rivera before shooting him and sent him a text message shortly after, Hermus told him. These texts were then removed from Guyger's phone, he said.

Speaking on Monday, Rivera said that he had started a romantic relationship with Guyger in 2017. He said that nothing seemed unusual about Guyger on the day of the shooting. The two men spoke on the phone before the shooting of robbery suspects they had arrested earlier in the day, but Rivera could not remember what they had talked about. He said that their call lasted about 16 minutes.

Rivera admitted to having removed the SMS exchanged with Guyger on the day of the shooting from his phone.

Three days after the shooting, Guyger was arrested for manslaughter. She was then removed from the Dallas Police Department and charged by a grand jury.

The trial jury will decide whether the 31-year-old has committed murder, a less serious offense such as manslaughter or a criminal negligent homicide, or no crime at all.

According to the jurists, the result could be that the jury felt that Guyger's mistake was reasonable.