Fired cop who killed innocent man in his own apartment testifies, 'I was scared he was going to kill me'

Amber Guyger, the former Dallas Police Department officer who shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Jean in his own apartment last year, testified during her murder trial Friday that she feared Jean was going to kill her, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Guyger entered Jean's apartment on the night of Sept. 6, 2018, in downtown Dallas — allegedly believing that she was walking into her own apartment. Prosecutors say Jean was sitting on the couch watching TV and eating ice cream when she came in.

She testified Friday — her first public comments since the killing — that she became frightened when she saw the silhouette of a person in the dark. So she pulled her gun and shouted, "Let me see your hands!" She said Jean began approaching her yelling, "Hey, hey, hey!" so she shot him twice.

"I was scared he was going to kill me," Guyger said of her reasoning for opening fire.

Amber Guyger breaks down sobbing as she testifies about night she killed Botham Jeanyoutu.be

It wasn't until after she shot Jean, Guyger said, that she looked around and realized she wasn't in her apartment. Her apartment was one floor below Jean's.

She claims she tried to do chest compressions on him, although prosecutors have questioned whether she made efforts to resuscitate Jean, since her uniform was clean and her gloves had not been used.

Guyger said being alone with someone who she had just shot was the "scariest thing you could ever imagine," a claim that the prosecution challenged during cross examination.

"Can you imagine Mr. Jean's perspective?" lead prosecutor Jason Hermus asked. "An intruder barging into his apartment — somebody on the other side of that door being you going in with the purpose of finding the threat and taking care of it. And then having been shot and fallen and being alone in that apartment — can't you imagine that being a little bit scarier than you just being alone at the moment?"

The prosecutor also noted that no neighbors who testified heard her alleged loud commands to Jean to show her his hands before she, by her own admission, shot to kill.

Texas Ranger David Armstrong, the lead investigator into the shooting, had bizarrely argued earlier in the trial — although not in the presence of the jury — that Guyger had somehow not committed any crime by walking into another person's apartment and killing him, since she believed Jean was a burglar.

Texas Ranger says Amber Guyger was reasonable to feel threatened, but a jury won't hear ityoutu.be