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Your support makes all the difference.The white Dallas police officer who fatally shot a black man in his home after mistaking it for her own has been arrested on a manslaughter warrant, Texas authorities have said.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said Officer Amber Guyger was booked into the Kaufman County Jail and that the investigation was ongoing.
Ms Guyger killed 26-year-old Botham Jean on Thursday after entering his apartment thinking it was hers. Lawyers for Mr Jean’s family had been calling for Ms Guyger’s arrest, saying the fact that she had remained free days after the shooting showed she was receiving favourable treatment.
Ms Guyger, 30, is a four-year veteran of the police force.
According to police, she shot and killed Mr Jean after returning in uniform to the South Side Flats, where they both had apartments, following her shift. She reported the shooting to dispatchers and she told officers who responded that she had mistaken Mr Jean’s apartment for her own.
Friends and family gathered Saturday at the Dallas West Church of Christ to remember Mr Jean, who had been working for accounting firm PwC since graduating in 2016 from Harding University in Arkansas, where he often led campus religious services as a student. They described him as a devout Christian and a talented singer.
“Botham did everything with passion,” Allison Jean told the prayer service. “God gave me an angel.”
His uncle, Ignatius Jean, said the killing has devastated the family and left it searching for answers.
“You want to think it’s fiction, and you have to grapple with the reality,” he said.
Mr Jean wasn’t the first person shot by Ms Guyger, it was revealed previously. She shot another man, Uvaldo Perez, on 12 May, 2017, while on duty.
According to an affidavit in the case filed against Mr Perez, police were looking for a suspect when Ms Guyger and another officer were called to assist a third. Mr Perez got out of a car and became combative with Ms Guyger and another officer. A struggle began and Ms Guyger fired her Taser at Mr Perez, who then wrested it away from her. She then drew her gun and fired, wounding Mr Perez in the abdomen.
Ms Guyger was not charged in the 2017 shooting.
Additional reporting by AP
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