Breaking News Emails
Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
The Dallas Police Department on Monday fired an officer who barged into the wrong apartment in her building and killed a man who was inside.
The dismissal of Amber Guyger was announced by Dallas Police Chief Reneé Hall on Twitter.
Guyger, who was hired in November 2013, was fired after an Internal Affairs investigation concluded that the officer “engaged in adverse conduct when she was arrested for Manslaughter,” the chief’s Tweet read.
Hall’s tweet shed no new light on the death of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
It remains unclear why the officer opened fire or what she may have been doing before she returned to her building after working a full shift. But Hall said earlier that a blood sample was drawn at her request to test the officer’s drug and alcohol levels.
Guyger, 30, was arrested three days after the Sept. 6 fatal shooting on suspicion of manslaughter. She has been free on bond and has been on administrative leave since then.
According to her arrest warrant, Guyger somehow ended up on the wrong floor of the building and entered the apartment directly below hers, which belonged to Jean.
The Dallas Police Association declined comment on the firing, citing the ongoing investigation that is being done by the Texas Rangers. The Dallas County District Attorney’s office is also conducting its own probe of the fatal shooting.
Jean’s death outraged the Caribbean community in Dallas and the question of whether Guyger should be fired became an issue in the hotly-contested U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Meanwhile, civil rights attorney Lee Merritt accused the police of trying to besmirch Jean by searching his home for drugs and other illegal items after he was dead. Investigators later said in a court document that they found 10.4 grams of marijuana.
Jean worked in risk assurance at PricewaterhouseCoopers and was a graduate of a private Christian university.