Ex-Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger wept on the witness stand and her quiet voice broke as she repeated “I’m sorry” to the courtroom, expressing regret over taking her neighbor’s life after mistaking his apartment for hers.
“I feel like a piece of crap,” she said, sobbing. “I hate that I have to live with this, and ask God for forgiveness and I hate myself every single day. I wish he had had the gun and had killed me.”
Guyger’s emotional testimony began Friday morning when she took the stand in her defense during the fifth day of her murder trial. She laid out her narrative of what happened when she killed Botham Jean, believing he was a burglar inside her apartment, on Sept. 6, 2018.
Guyger said she was tired and “just ready to go home” when she left work on the night she entered Jean’s unit, confusing it for hers and fatally shooting him.
She earlier grew emotional on the stand while defense attorney Toby Shook began questioning her about when she tried to use her electronic key fob to open the door to Jean’s apartment, and had her recreate that moment following a brief break.
She had her bags and police vest slung on her left arm and used her right hand to put the key in the lock, she said. The door opened at that moment.
“I was scared,” she said. “Your heart rate just skyrockets.”
Guyger said she saw a “silhouette figure” in the distance near the window, drew her weapon and began shouting, “Let me see your hands! Let me see your hands!”
Jean, she added, appeared to be coming toward her and yelled, “Hey! Hey Hey!” in an “aggressive voice.”
That’s when she shot him.
She only noticed she was in the wrong apartment after seeing an ottoman in the middle of the floor and noticed the television was on, she testified.
Earlier, Guyger explained how she was having an affair with her work partner but had ended the relationship although the two had been texting and shared a phone call just before she got home.
“I felt like it was morally wrong,” Guyger said about her relationship with Officer Martin Rivera, adding, “I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere.”
She also said she was “embarrassed” by the relationship and didn’t want her colleagues to know about it because Rivera is married. The pair were partners in the same elite crime response team.
Guyger’s plans on the night Jean died have become central to the trial.
Prosecutors have used text messages she shared with Rivera to make the case that Guyger was not as fatigued and made plans to meet with Rivera on the night she said she mistakenly entered Jean’s apartment when she got home just before 10 p.m.
Guyger on Friday said she was tired after her 13-1/2-hour shift, but that while she and Rivera’s physical relationship had ended, they still shared flirtatious text messages.
At the heart of the trial is whether Guyger’s use of force was reasonable when she opened fire inside Jean’s apartment, believing it was her unit and he was an intruder. She has said she put her key into Jean’s apartment door, but that it pushed open.
A Texas Ranger investigator testified this week that the door had a flaw and didn’t always fully shut.
Guyger lived on the third floor of the South Side Flats complex, one floor below Jean.
Prosecutors have raised questions as to how Guyger could have missed sensory cues before entering Jean’s apartment, including a red doormat that the outside of Guyger’s unit didn’t have.
In a 911 recording played earlier this week, Guyger said, “I thought it was my apartment,” about 19 times.
The jury on Friday heard about Guyger’s upbringing: She was the youngest of three children who was raised primarily by her mother in the Dallas suburb of Arlington. She knew at 6 that she wanted to be a police officer because “I wanted to help people. That was the one career I thought I could help people.”
At the police academy, Guyger testified, she was trained to tell suspects “let me see your hands” because “the closer the suspect would get to us would be a bad day for us.”
Jean’s death has become a flashpoint in Dallas, leading to protests for increased police accountability and reigniting conversations about police use of force and racial bias. Guyger is white and Jean was black.
Dallas has grappled with race relations in recent years, including with the 2016 fatal shooting of five city police officers that authorities said was perpetrated in response to earlier police-involved shootings.
During his opening statements, defense attorney Robert Rogers downplayed Guyger’s and Rivera’s relationship, and pointed out that dozens of other tenants reported having parked on the wrong floor or gone to the wrong apartment, and that Guyger as a police officer was aware of “a lot of crime in the area.”
Guyger was fired from the Dallas police in the weeks after the shooting. She faces a maximum of life in prison if found guilty of murder.
