Ex-Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger wept on the witness stand Friday morning, her voice soft and trembling as she repeated "I'm sorry" to the courtroom and expressed 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," she said of her neighbor, Botham Jean. "I never wanted to take an innocent person's life."
Guyger's testimony began the fifth day of her murder trial, as her defense team attempted to make the former officer and her actions relatable to jurors. She laid out a narrative of what she says happened on Sept. 6, 2018, when she left her job at the Dallas Police Department and returned to her apartment complex, where she went to Jean's unit on the wrong floor and believed he was a burglar inside her apartment.
"I was scared that he was going to come at me and kill me," she said.
Guyger said she was tired after a 13-1/2-hour shift and "just ready to go home" before she arrived at Jean's unit, drawing her service weapon and fatally shooting him in the chest. She was in uniform but off duty at the time.
She became emotional on the stand when 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 was already open.
"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 said.
She only realized 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 that Jean, a 26-year-old accountant, 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.
2019-09-27 16:05:00Z
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