An attorney for the young Black man shot and killed by a Dallas police officer last week pointed to several inconsistencies in the bizarre tragedy and says investigators are still digging for a potential connection between the two neighbors.
Officer Amber Guyger, 30, had just finished a 15-hour shift when she claims to have walked into the wrong apartment, thinking it was her own. Inside was her neighbor, a 26-year-old accounting firm associate named Botham Jean, whose “large silhouette” startled her into firing her gun into the apartment, killing the young man.
Police have since charged Guyger with manslaughter, however, some parties are pushing for more serious charges, including civil rights attorney S. Lee Merritt.
Merritt, who’s representing Jean’s family, appeared on CNN this week to discuss the case and noted how things simply aren’t adding up. For one, Guyger initially claimed the door to the apartment was “ajar” but neighbors said they remembered hearing a woman banging and shouting “let me in” moments before the shooting.
Guyger said she ultimately shot the man after he ignored her “verbal commands.”
“I know what’s stated in the affidavit is simply untrue,” Merritt told host Brooke Baldwin.
Baldwin then inquired into whether Jean and Guyger may have known each other, which Merritt denied. He said of all the people he’s spoken to, “no one could connect these two in any meaningful way.”
The denial comes amid a photo circulating on social media of Jean posing with a group of white women, one of them believed to be Guyger, which sparked rumors that the two may have had a prior relationship.
“The only connection we have been able to make is that she was his immediate downstairs neighbor,” he explained. “And there were noise complaints from the immediate downstairs neighbors about whoever was upstairs — and that would have been Botham.”
“In fact, there were noise complaints that very day about upstairs activity in Botham’s apartment,” Merritt added. “Botham received a phone call about noise coming from his apartment from the downstairs neighbor.”
Watch more in the clip below.
